It won't be much different than it is now. Bugs in games are not new. Early Access games are, but they have come out with some great games. Divinity, Wasteland 2 and Grim Dawn in the future. All games are buggy until completion, common sense should tell people that. Sure, some end up still being buggy.....but the thing is.....ALL PC GAMES HAVE BUGS.

i think valve will still have there ♥♥♥♥ rules on CS GO and steam will still suck

Bugs? I'm talking about much more than bugs, These so called Early Access titles are nothing but a barren open sandbox of PS2 level graphics slapped with a new name and description. Label it Early Access, charge retail price, then literally have gamers paying developers to test and ultimately develop their "scam..i mean game" for them rather than the other way around.

Originally posted by The Brown Hornet:

Bugs? I'm talking about much more than bugs, These so called Early Access titles are nothing but a barren open sandbox of PS2 level graphics slapped with a new name and description. Label it Early Access, charge retail price, then literally have gamers paying developers to test and ultimately develop their "scam..i mean game" for them rather than the other way around.

The term scam get thrown around far too much. A scam would be you paid for a game and did not get one. That won't happen here. A lot of the Early Access titles are indie games who do not have a $150 million dollar budget for a huge development team, let alone a team of testers. Early Access is optional, if you don't want to participate....don't. Most of the Early Access games I have seen are cheaper than retail price as well. When they ask people for testing.....they want people who are enthusiastic about the game. Not people who are gonna cry because of bugs that are obviously going to be there.

ALL PC games have bugs during development. Every single one. All finished PC games also have bugs if you look hard enough.

Originally posted by supertrooper225:

Originally posted by The Brown Hornet:

Bugs? I'm talking about much more than bugs, These so called Early Access titles are nothing but a barren open sandbox of PS2 level graphics slapped with a new name and description. Label it Early Access, charge retail price, then literally have gamers paying developers to test and ultimately develop their "scam..i mean game" for them rather than the other way around.

The term scam get thrown around far too much. A scam would be you paid for a game and did not get one. That won't happen here. A lot of the Early Access titles are indie games who do not have a $150 million dollar budget for a huge development team, let alone a team of testers. Early Access is optional, if you don't want to participate....don't. Most of the Early Access games I have seen are cheaper than retail price as well. When they ask people for testing.....they want people eho are enthusiastic about the game. Not people who are gonna cry because of bugs that are obviously going to be there.

They also want a constant stream of money, funny how the microtransactions in the game always work flawlessly but everything else is a mess.

Originally posted by riggz666:

it's a store, like any other store there's things you like and things you walk past and ignore.
shop responsibly and you won't have too many issues.

Early access can produce some awesome games but if you don't like the idea just don't buy into it, simple.

Exactly.

Originally posted by riggz666:

it's a store, like any other store there's things you like and things you walk past and ignore.
shop responsibly and you won't have too many issues.

Early access can produce some awesome games but if you don't like the idea just don't buy into it, simple.

My thread is that in 5 years the majority of titles on this platform will be Early Access, there wont be any way of avoiding it. Early Access will hurt the gaming market because it produces and encourages lazy developers who will figure out that half done is more profitable than fully done.

Originally posted by The Brown Hornet:

Originally posted by riggz666:

it's a store, like any other store there's things you like and things you walk past and ignore.
shop responsibly and you won't have too many issues.

Early access can produce some awesome games but if you don't like the idea just don't buy into it, simple.

My thread is that in 5 years the majority of titles on this platform will be Early Access, there wont be any way of avoiding it. Early Access will hurt the gaming market because it produces and encourages lazy developers who will figure out that half done is more profitable than fully done.

Not necessarily. Most of the early access games are from indie devs. There are hundreds of games released a year....maybe more. How many of those turn out truly great? A small fraction of the released games. Early Access or not. Game development is far more complicated than people think. Things happen during development, you outrun your budget, a bug requires a rewrite of twenty percent of your code, not all of the features get together as they should....anything can happen during development. Sure there are some genuinely bad developers but that is any industry. AAA teams are under contract from their publishing houses and they are required to finish a game by a certian date, lest the companies stock loses value. This won't change.

Indie games are not the entirety of the industry. Far from it. My advice would be for you to avoid the Early Access stuff until completion. Simple. The AAA houses are not participating in Early Access for the most part. So nothing is going to change because of Early Access.

Early access will be a self-limiting phenomena. Just like pre-orders, people will gradually learn to be less trusting and wait for the reviews. I expect the gaming market to further differentiate along the triple A and indie divide - blockbusters versus straight-to-Steam, commercial versus arthouse and alternative - with Steam offering them all. As choice becomes ever wider Steam will have to improve its search and front page so people aren't bombarded with stuff they don't want. Like, early access and naff curators for example.

Depends how greedy they are and stupid, Just look at EA and DICE LOL

Early Access will not make a whit of difference, I agree it will be self limiting. AAA titles will remain, there's no reason for them not to be here unless they have another top tier digital distribution solution. And only if that distro requires exclusive distro rights. Even EA lets some titles loose from Origin. I agree what WILL have to change is the searching, browsing and targetting features, as well as categorization. The RPG genre is a prime example with any game where you can change your pants and play with a different style of weapon claiming "RPG" (elements) status. The user tags, I think, were an attempt in this "better classification" direction. Unfortunately, there's a reason game devs and pubs claim "RPG" on a platformer, and that's the user base biting on that RPG dangle, the same user base classifying the games on Steam. As gaming matures, however, I think the whole thing we call "genre" now will become a newer classification of "game mechanic", with genre being replaced by the genres used in more familiar media like fiction, movies, and television (horror, action, fantasy, thriller). Currently games are classified more like music in terms of genre and, like music, there are just too many subgenres and mashups for this to be useful any longer. Is it Metal? Death Metal? Goth Metal? Hell Pop? In music it's getting so bad that it seems like every band has its own preferred-to-be-classified-in genre, which kind of defeats the purpose of grouping them in the first place.

Originally posted by kdodds:

Early Access will not make a whit of difference, I agree it will be self limiting. AAA titles will remain, there's no reason for them not to be here unless they have another top tier digital distribution solution. And only if that distro requires exclusive distro rights. Even EA lets some titles loose from Origin. I agree what WILL have to change is the searching, browsing and targetting features, as well as categorization. The RPG genre is a prime example with any game where you can change your pants and play with a different style of weapon claiming "RPG" (elements) status. The user tags, I think, were an attempt in this "better classification" direction. Unfortunately, there's a reason game devs and pubs claim "RPG" on a platformer, and that's the user base biting on that RPG dangle, the same user base classifying the games on Steam. As gaming matures, however, I think the whole thing we call "genre" now will become a newer classification of "game mechanic", with genre being replaced by the genres used in more familiar media like fiction, movies, and television (horror, action, fantasy, thriller). Currently games are classified more like music in terms of genre and, like music, there are just too many subgenres and mashups for this to be useful any longer. Is it Metal? Death Metal? Goth Metal? Hell Pop? In music it's getting so bad that it seems like every band has its own preferred-to-be-classified-in genre, which kind of defeats the purpose of grouping them in the first place.

Interesting but I simply see too many ways Early Access can and has been abused. Don't want to mention any specific titles but there is a current game that is living in Early Access status yet constantly raising the price. All the while those that are playing it have reported that it's barely progressed since the mod. Steam doesn't seem to have any regulation of EA, there isn't even a guarantee that a developer must finish the game! They can literally get all the gamers money up front and later dump the project! If anything Early access should be regulated like an investment and gamers should get a return on the investmen, a complete refund! If not then its a crime like Bernie Madoff! Steam also should not advertise Early Access titles alongside the triple A's like Resident Evil, Mass Effect, Fallout, Left 4 Dead, etc...sure I am an older mature gamer but steam is full of kids who are easy to exploit and don't know better. Some say it's just the Indie developers using Early Access but we now can see companies like SONY selling through early access! It's literally a free pass to sell broken games!

Originally posted by The Brown Hornet:

funny how the microtransactions in the game always work flawlessly but everything else is a mess.

*cough*Spartans Vs Zombies Defense*cough* (microtransactions dose not work)

In 5 years i see Steam growing to become bigger, with more type of games released and Indie growing bigger in the market, AAA titles releasing less, but bigger and less bug on launch titles

I see some older games coming into Steam, many on a remastered version of the game.
As well as more Local Co-Op coming in when Steam will grow to the living room

I see Steam selling Music and Movies that are game related, as well as growing there software part of the store

Early Access become a better system with more understanding of the users abut what it means, and how it works, as well as better understanding for Devs abut the risk that Early Access holds

I see Steam having more feathers, and adding tab browsing to Steam Client, as well as an upgrade to the groups part of Steam

and better filtering on the Steam Store

in 5 years ?
by then I'll have 9,000 games on steam

Steam will have even more games,software and possibly a legendary game that will change the minds of people. But its not even Valve's.