this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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This is very good, but I hope devs can't just get around it by releasing a 5kb empty update to reset the counter.
I think most of the games that would be in this position aren't willing or able to do that. It's not like there's a ton of income on stale half-released games with no active development, but people should be aware that's what they're looking at anyway.
Jokes on them, I got burned on a couple early access games in like 2012 or something so I quit buying early access. Wait for a release.
DayZ Standalone for you as well?
Yup, still salty about that one
I can't remember, but snow was one of them.
Which is fair. Most people should not buy early access, and should wait for the devs to declare their project release ready. Early access buying is all risk and responsibility (to post feedback, to update Steam review if it's out of date withe the project, to understand the individual project's development pace, etc), with a lot of factors a buyer should take into account, that most people genuinely should not need to care about or wait for.
There are an insane number of Steam games already released to buy and play.
I can always tell that a game has given up when their "updates" are all about what the community has built in the game, rather than what the developers have built.
This is just pressure on the business folks, not the devs.
I’m a game dev of 20 years and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a dev with that sort of scammy inclination. On the business side of things though…
I follow lots of early access devs, and it's not uncommon for some devs to blatantly post updates only strategically, fixing some minor thing as the next seasonal Steam sale approaches. Some continue even after leaving early access: serious issues in bug report threads, but some minor fix gets posted as the sale approaches, clearly to make the game look alive, even though none of the big stuff is getting fixed.
Plenty of devs are their own business side, anymore.