Way too many games die in early access, like too many kickscammer projects effectively run away with the money. I don't think a broad approach is feasable, unless only the worst offenders are the focus.

I have been in long contemplation of how to approach specific early access titles with poor management and such, but I have yet to settle on an approach I'm happy with, and I don't just want to throw anything I can up, and as Avantyr said, a broad approach doesn't work sufficiently with things like this.

For now, I highly recommend the Steam group Early Access Watcher which is headed up by one of Sentinels of the Store's researchers, Mute has his stuff on lock about early access products.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/earlyaccesswatcher

Sounds good. I appreciate the link.

Not just mismanagement. That is common at all small indies, including successful ones. Look at the fall of Telltale as the most obvious current example.

With that game, to keep the example rolling, the bad decision started the moment they decided to develop a large-scale multiplayer survival sandbox game. Considering there are like 400 other games like that and all are built in a way to ensure the players can and should spend dozens of hours on them on a weekly basis, the entire scene was beyond any sensible or insensible definition of "oversaturated". (And We Happy Few would have bit the dust even without Gearbox ruining it completely.)

Thing is, once someone manages to get some investment and a small studio rolling, they suddenly believe they will have the next big thing, the next MineCraft, not realising that a hit like that in the entertainment industry is one in ten thousand or even less. And this gets significantly worse when you make a game aimed at the multiplayer crowd. Sure, it is enticing to do an MMO, since you can skip things like writing a cohesive story, but it will almost never get any player numbers.

So, it is not just mismanagement, the issue starts at the lack of sensibility and rationality. Starts at devs being seriously delusional about their own limits. It is a miracle that Sony did not totally bleed out Hello Games and they somehow managed to spend a crapload of their received money on fixing their junk to turn it into less of a junk, but not everyone can get Japanese as investors who can look at these decisions in a level-headed way and have some patience to salvage stuff. Most similar projects die.

And even then, single-player games can bit the dust. Look at Woolfe. It was actually a decent game, but with its lack of exposure, it tanked horribly.
Video game development is a risky venture. It is part of the entertainment industry, which is also a thing many devs fail to comprehend; it is not about coding skills, it is about being at the right place at the right time and self-marketing.If you suck at those, your game fails even if it is the next big thing, then Activision—Blizzard, Valve, or some similar company living from regurgitating the work of others as their own will remake it as their own and make a gajillion dollars from it.

At least games like Stomping Grounds have balls to be removed from store.
Then we have games like Umbrella Corps and Godus that are listed as finished games yet they are clearly early access with amount of bugs and how low content is in them. Also both of them got abandoned in less than a year and still being sold to this day.

Ouch. Net balance : -$1.900.000 .

But hey :
- Early access
- MP only (according to the store page)
- No promotion (anybody heard of this game before the thread?)
- Survival sandbox (out of trend)
- buggy at release

All that, on top of what Talgaby just posted about market saturation and stuff.
The odds of success were really low.

... oh well. Apparently the devs are on another game now with some separate funds.
Let's just hope it was a learning experience for everybody involved.

Wow. I totally missed what was going on with Telltale. Never was interested in their "make some episodic "games" by using already existing franchises". I only own the Wolfman detctive game.

They blew up and introduced crunch time to their staff. Lovely. No wonder the studio is dead.

Sorry, but what is crunch time in Simple English? ^^

Originally posted by Ryuu:

Sorry, but what is crunch time in Simple English? ^^

https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577

Originally posted by Hibachi:

Originally posted by Ryuu:

Sorry, but what is crunch time in Simple English? ^^

https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577

Ah, yes, that's why i didn't go into game programmers, i'm bad with deadlines ^^
Still i'm now in the game industry and being an ex-programmer helps to cobble some tools for myself. :)

If you're a developer then releasing a game Early Access is a poor business decision most of the time. For me, if a game says Early Access then that's immediately a big red flag saying avoid this game and the chances of me buying that game are reduced a lot.

The statistics show that the biggest sales you'l get for your game are when you first release it regardless of whether you put an early access tag on it, the sales when releasing the completed game are a lot smaller. So do you really want to hamper initial sales of your game by releasing it early access?

I disagree.
EA works fine if
1) the game is in a playable and enjoyable state
2) the dev keeps the players informed and update the game regulartily
3) there's some buzz about the game at EA launch.

Early access has gained its destestable reputation from idiots who just threw around some barely started games (or asset flips) and promised they're going to finish it later.
Blame them, not the system that has been used to actually make some games better.