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Steam has added a new feature to early access games, flagging when they were last updated (www.pcgamesn.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It’s supposed to be an alternative to the publisher system.

In the overall software industry:

25% of projects succeed, with minor changes to budget, schedule, or scope
50% of projects deliver, but only after significant changes to budget, schedule, or scope
25% of projects fail to deliver at all

Games are probably even worse. (Edit: and this is just talking about delivery, to say nothing of market success.)

What happens to publishers in this environment?

They get risk-averse. They pass on weird ideas, they offer insulting amounts to new studios, they pull the ripcord at the slightest hint of trouble.

And… they inflate the price of successful games to cover the losses of the rest.

You were already paying for failed projects before Early Access existed, you just never got to see what they were or decide which ones you wanted to fund more than the others.

That’s not to say there’s no outright abuse, but that’s a small percentage of the flops that people complain about. For the most part, it’s just the normal boring everyday kind of failure that you pay for whether you get a chance to see it or not.