🚫Early Access

Steam Early Access ... and why you should definitely NOT do it

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Introduction

A great idea on paper but a horrible idea in practice.

You don't have to take our word for it there is a slew of videos and dev blogs on how EA is a horrible idea for really anyone except larger AA studios.

Why It's a Bad Idea

The crux of the issue is player sentiment, while a developer might think of Early Access as a sort of fluid Alpha and Beta cycle, players think of Early Access as a complete game in the final stages of polish and they have been trained to think that way.

No Benefit

Let's get this out of the way first, there is NO benefit to early access. There is no reason not "Go Live" and do updates to your live game using Steam's Branch system for Alpha, Beta, etc. or to use the Playtest system for pre-release testing. There is NOTHING that you gain from doing an Early Access that you can't get from other systems and approaches with less effort and less fallout.

Huge Workload

This can work for larger AA studios that have built out the mechanics and systems of a game e.g. are "Feature Complete" or very near it and are just fleshing out the content. For a team that large doing monthly updates of significant content while also managing a community is achievable. For a solo indie, a small team, an inexperienced team or even an AA with a tight budget or headcount this usually spells disaster.

Negative Stigma

Add to this that Early Access games have a stigma around them especially from unknown developers. "Cash Grab" and "Scam" are flung around as default and a few have even tried litigation (lawsuits) despite it being very clearly stated that it's Early Access and the game may never be completed or launched much less updated promptly.

The negative reviews you will get during this period are part of the main game and remain post-release. Steam may filter them and label them but it sets the tone and a negative tone is exceedingly difficult to reverse though not impossible.

Attention Economy

The reality of it is, that game like all media is an attention economy. That is to find success you need to earn the attention of enough people to make a profit. Like with all things attention is highest when its new and new to a user is when it's first accessible... for an early access game this means day 1 Early Access.

So your most "hype" period is when your game is at its worst and least complete and polished. You then have the impossible task of maintaining attention while polishing the game. Already polished major games struggle to maintain attention more than a few months with a polished release experience EA games struggle even more.

Sure your supper fans will love it and eat it up but the average gamer will lose interest and move on before your game ever releases its already old news to them. And for your supper fans, they would have been just as happy with a Playtest or Alpha/Beta as they are with an Early Access.

The net result is "Dead Game" is the community view by the time your game hits its v1.0 release.

How to Make it Work

So Early Access can be successful, it however requires solid engineering practices, community management and project management to make it happen. As well as no small amount of good timing, market awareness and simple luck. If you are an experienced team with stable resources and a solid plan you can make Early Access a success, but we would still argue that you are not going to get anything from it that you could get from a Playtest, Beta or similar and despite your skill and experience you still have to overcome the negative stigma around Early Access.

Maybe you have huge brand awareness on your side and you have the staff and budget so you want to take a swing at it ... so here are some considerations.

Communicaiton is KING

Community Campaign

You need to run a community-building campaign BEFORE you start Early Access. You want to make sure you have a portion of your population that are your advocates. Fans of you that you developed through community building that help you manage and convert incoming users and reduce the toxicity that is just part of the human race and a big part of gaming culture sadly.

Scheduled Updates

Establish a pattern with your pre-built community so they know what to expect in terms of frequency and style of communication. Setting expectations is critical to building a relationship of any kind most of all a product/customer relationship.

We would recommend at least small monthly updates these can be dev blog like small talk ... not ideal but fine for small indies. Couple this with larger quarterly updates and you have a foundation you can build on.

Avoid weekly updates, unless you're a fairly major studio with a dedicated community management team this isn't going to be something you can sustain and community is something you MUST sustain.

Expectations

Telegraph your intent well ahead of time, including any failures or issues. You need to set the tone for every conversation happening in your community. You do that by (wherever possible) being the initial source that starts that conversation and by remaining active in it for its duration.

Feature Complete

This is a MUST the game MUST be feature complete, this doesn't mean releasing all the features at once it does mean having them done and ready to release.

Limited Release

Disable features and release a build that focuses on a specific area of your game to be tested. This means disabling levels, classes, modes whatever it is your game does for content organization and reducing the build to a "slice" of your game to be tested.

FREQUENT Updates

You need to be releasing patches on a regular schedule, one you can sustain indefinitely without missing a beat. As with communication monthly is likely as slow as you can get away with here, fornightly (2 weeks) is better. Weekly and daily are possibilities if you have a proper DevOps cycle set up with a dedicated QA process in place but for most solo indies it's going to be a fortnightly or monthly thing.

Events

You MUST keep players engaged, this means frequent updates, with periodic events such as Monthly or Quarterly major patches, community events and streams and anything you can manage to keep the player base highly engaged.

Games are notorious for a "long tail" This means they get their best attention when they are truly new, immediately after becoming publicly accessible. Your Early Access is that point so you are starting your downslope before your game is complete. This means you need to put extra effort into keeping the spectacle that is your product fresh for the duration of your Early Access else there won't be any way to hear about your next big patch that makes everything all better.