Early access has been abused so much that devs are mostly forced to use EA in order to make a soft release.
And not all indie devs are saints, why should you be able to charge any money for a literal alpha prototype? We are now paying to be not even beta but alpha testers?
Again EA abuse completely destroyed the software developement foundations behind most indie devs. Way too many of them work on their game for a year and then release a crappy alpha.
20 years ago the idea would be laughed at, today we pay money for any half decent prototype with slightly better than Unity Asset store models. That is the lowest barrier of entry and its understandable people have become cynical.
Of course there are EA success stories obviously, from single devs that get it right to big “indie” studios but those are the exception.
I think there are also quite a few devs that hide behind the “oh its still early access, there is still time” to hide behind their incompetence and/or unwillingless to fix bugs. Sometimes they’ll keep making promises of new content, adding more and more stuff and never looking back at their engine bugs etcs as a result EA is not a guarantee of bug free release even if “done right”. The devs may simply prioritize content over bugs.
Maybe my references are skewed, but I remember Minecraft’s alpha was $5, beta was $10, and the full release I think was $20 or something. Which both seemed really fair price-wise but also made sense as to making buying a game early appealing because you’re paying less for it; it’s not an act of charity to buy a game in early access. Now they seem to be charging full price and are basically going “uwu, i’m a smol indie-dev” and asking for people to donate money and faith to someone they don’t know because they’re petit-bourgeois.
Early access has been abused so much that devs are mostly forced to use EA in order to make a soft release.
And not all indie devs are saints, why should you be able to charge any money for a literal alpha prototype? We are now paying to be not even beta but alpha testers?
Again EA abuse completely destroyed the software developement foundations behind most indie devs. Way too many of them work on their game for a year and then release a crappy alpha.
20 years ago the idea would be laughed at, today we pay money for any half decent prototype with slightly better than Unity Asset store models. That is the lowest barrier of entry and its understandable people have become cynical.
Of course there are EA success stories obviously, from single devs that get it right to big “indie” studios but those are the exception.
I think there are also quite a few devs that hide behind the “oh its still early access, there is still time” to hide behind their incompetence and/or unwillingless to fix bugs. Sometimes they’ll keep making promises of new content, adding more and more stuff and never looking back at their engine bugs etcs as a result EA is not a guarantee of bug free release even if “done right”. The devs may simply prioritize content over bugs.
Maybe my references are skewed, but I remember Minecraft’s alpha was $5, beta was $10, and the full release I think was $20 or something. Which both seemed really fair price-wise but also made sense as to making buying a game early appealing because you’re paying less for it; it’s not an act of charity to buy a game in early access. Now they seem to be charging full price and are basically going “uwu, i’m a smol indie-dev” and asking for people to donate money and faith to someone they don’t know because they’re petit-bourgeois.