Questions about Early Access, and Distance.

[watts300]

I've read Steam's article about Early Access, so I know what it is, but I'm still curious about the whole deal with it.

 

Are the developers of an Early Access game obligated to continue working on it and eventually finalize it to an official product? I wouldn't want to buy into Early Access and get left with a buggy unfinished game that the developer abandoned. 

 

Has any one here had any bad experiences with Early Access games?  (I don't mean bugs and crashes. I understand those are possible and part of the deal.) 

 

I'm specifically interested in the game Distance.  Does any one here have it?  What do you think of it?  Are there multiple cars?

I've watched a couple guys on YouTube play it, and it looks fun.  But does it have enough appeal/content/whatever to make it fun for more than the duration of a few YouTube videos?  

 

 

[Butter1484]

While I myself have not had any Early Access games that are abandoned, it can and does happen. The developers are in no way obligated to complete the game.

[OfficialJsP]

I have had a few bad experiences with early access such as nether they stop developing it but I think they have came back it also happened to spintires but they are also back with regular updates. The only game that I have recently bought that was in early access was dirt rally and I haven't regretted it.

[watts300]

The developers are in no way obligated to complete the game.

Dumb. Very. 

[LogicalDrm]

I'm pretty sure it works same way as kickstarter for items. Devs can show off their work and get pre-funded buy users. If game gets beta or close to release, Steam publishes it on Store. There have been cases where game is abandoned or published unfinished. I think Steam is obligated to refund purchase in that case.

[ManOfDisguise]

Don't give in to Early Access games. I made that mistake with games like DayZ,Rust,Goat Simulator,Next Car Game and some others and I regret buying every one of them

[watts300]

Don't give in to Early Access games..... I regret buying every one of them

Why is that?  

[ManOfDisguise]

Why is that?  

It's too risky and you don't know what you will get. Sure there might be a schedule, for example something like:

 

Vehicles coming in 6 months

Crafting later on

Base building after that

 

etc.  but that doesn't mean the devs actually go by it. I was waiting forever for vehicles to come into the DayZ standalone but when I was still playing it they never did come heck I don't even know if they are in now. Not to mention dayz has a load of bugs some of which are really annoying and can kill your character. The optimisation in a lot of these early access games is crap even if you have good specs the game will run at low fps.

 

And not to mention some of these devs just COMPLETELY change their game a couple months later. For example Next Car Game. We were all hoping for an awesome FlatOut succesor with awesome arcady racing gameplay but later on they changed it to more of a racing sim. WTF? Not what I payed for! Or Rust. Legacy was awesome and while you can still play it I don't think it's that supported if supported at all. Instead they went with a new version with whole new randomly generated maps and while it looks nice(even graphically better than Legacy) a lot has changed which a lot of Legacy players dont like.

 

Look at the guys who made Space Engineers. They havent even completely polished and finished Space Engineers and are already released a 2nd game(Medieval Engineers). Like seriously?

 

There are maybe a few good early access games if you look hard enough but I would just stick to getting full released games or waiting for the early access games to reach a stage where it has enough content and is polished and optimised enough for it to be considered a full game.

 

There are other problems too but I won't go over all of it, would be for far too long.

[watts300]

It's too risky and you don't know what you will get. Sure there might be a schedule, for example something like:

 

.

.

.

 

.

.

 

There are other problems too but I won't go over all of it, would be for far too long.

Thanks for posting.  That's plenty to consider. I think I'll do some more researching/watching of Distance. 

[ManOfDisguise]

Thanks for posting.  That's plenty to consider. I think I'll do some more researching/watching of Distance. 

I mean you could try buying an early access game now that Steam has the refund feature. But do the research and do lots of it before buying. Many times these games got me because of the big promises of devs and when I heard all that would be in the game I was like "wow I gotta get this" but in the end I regretted it.

 

I personally reccomend staying away from them and waiting for them to be in a state where they are worth the price. They are always at their worst when they just come out.

[leelaa14]

I got killing floor 2, Dayz and dirt rally...
dayz is a waste of time...complete shit. (Que all the idiots marching with the "a new renderer is coming next week")
Killing floor 2 was good but a lack of content..........and then they went and fucked it up by adding micro transaction to an early access game.
Dirt rally is fucking amazing.....and punishing (in a good way) 

So I suppose it all boils down to  how much of a cock end the devs are wanting to be.