Closing the early access loophole.
This isn’t about early access. This is explicitly about Advanced Access, where a special edition grants access to the complete game a few days early.
This is a closed loophole, not an injustice.
I think this is fine so long as valve continues to allow exceptions in cases of obvious bait and switches, etc as they have historically.
Yeah, and hopefully in general for cases where an update significantly changes functionality, like DRM requiring always-on our breaking stuff like Steam Deck compatibility for those users
Yeah idk how I feel about that. Its kind-of on the developer for offering early access. Its not like they aren’t getting data from people playing early access.
Maybe early access just shouldn’t be a thing or needs to be free. Or they could just pay people to test their games?
2 hours isn’t shit. Especially not if something is in early access and isn’t even close to a finished product.
Ehhh, I’m actually (surprisingly) gonna disagree here. Obviously there are special cases, where the game worked in EA and had some game-breaking crash on release, but those are the exception and not the norm.
If you paid for EA, that’s 100% on you and I don’t think a refund should be available at all (after the initial time limit, of course). You paid for an unfinished game and that’s exactly what you got. It literally doesn’t matter what the game releases as.
If you played a game with free EA, you know more-or-less what you were getting on release. You know the developer’s communication style and their release cadence, and you’ve literally played the game. I would like to see this time limit extended back to maybe 30m/1hr (it may be different in ways you don’t like), but I don’t see a problem with reducing it if you’ve already experienced parts of the game.
I would like to see this time limit extended back to maybe 30m/1hr (it may be different in ways you don’t like), but I don’t see a problem with reducing it if you’ve already experienced parts of the game.
The problem is some games don’t even start at 30m point. Interactive introes and tutorials are here to misrepresent the future gameplay. Especially with a trick like making you have all power ups before having them all taken from you to grind them back. Take Skyrim where real game starts somewhen at Helgen after a starting dungeon.
Add there games that have it’s own launchers them being a problem to log into while the timer is already ticking.
And those are fundamental problems with the 2 hour refund system but the loophole they closed just makes sense. You shouldn’t be able to play a game for 48 hours while its in AAA “early access” Ie you preorder the game’s special edition (Starfield and that new ubisoft star wars game are doing this) and you can play the game a few days before launch but since the game isn’t released you can get a no questions refund. To be honest, I assume those kind of games already followed the 2 hour restriction but I guess it was very uncommon until very recently but now this is a new way for Publishers to screw consumers because it means consumers can start playing before embargoes for game reviews come out.
If you paid for EA, that’s 100% on you and I don’t think a refund should be available at all (after the initial time limit, of course). You paid for an unfinished game and that’s exactly what you got. It literally doesn’t matter what the game releases as.
Yeah I mean I agree with that, but its also on the developer too to… to just maybe finish the game before release? Like if a half finished product is what you made and what you release and you and your customers are cool with that, great. But thats not what EA is.
Idk yeah. Yeah I think that maybe you shouldn’t be able to charge for early access. That would simplify the whole thing. I don’t think gating it makes more sense.
Smaller devs can use EA to secure funding to complete the game. I’m not against it. Hell, some of my favorite games I played in EA and they were absolutely worth the money even unfinished. Most notably rust, 7 days to die, Valheim(!!!), rimworld… OK I like survival games.
Then we have whale milking factories like star citizen, but that’s where due diligence comes in. Read reviews, watch gameplay, enter with realistic expectations and you won’t be disappointed.
absolutely worth the money even unfinished.
I completely agree with it in principal for supporting the smaller development teams.
I completely disagree. A dev conceding to release in early access = a dev committing to later release a finished product which the early accessor will also receive a license to play. Without the latter part, early access becomes a moot system in principle, just a pathway provided by platforms to monetise unfinished games, which may never be finished.
And the value proposition for that finished product shouldn’t be affected at all by its pre-launch state. Early access isn’t for the benefit of consumers. That many games remain in “early access” for an extended period of time (such that sufficient gameplay value can be extracted prior to actual launch) isn’t really anything to do with the concept of early access itself. It certainly shouldn’t negate your right as a consumer to say “this isn’t fit for purpose” once the final product arrives in your hands. After all if it’s not fit for purpose during the early access period, that isn’t necessarily representative of whether it will be post-launch.
In spite of some of the comments to the contrary here, I really think this is fine. Early access is early access. 2 hours has been the ground truth for a while. It does seem like a loophole, and I’m fine with them filling it.
Edit: and it isn’t really about Early Access – it’s about Advanced Access, from pre-orders.
Nah, I get the urge to jump to the defense at this point but I imagine the majority of people doing this weren’t malicious and the actual devs have already been paid and aren’t losing money on this. It lies squarely at the feet of the capitalist production companies in my opinion and fuck them.
Wild, I didn’t realise this was possible for early access games.
Not early access games but more AAA “Early access games”, which means you preorder advanced edition you get to play like a week early. The biggest examples being Starfield and that new Star wars game by ubisoft (with the insane price of 130 for its super special edition). So this is just a logical loophole getting closed. We can have disagreements with the 2 hour refund window on steam but I don’t think it was ever intentional for you to play 48 hours of a game then being able to refund the thing since its not official out.
Aha the “Unlock Game Early Edition” trend, which is awful in itself. Makes it a slightly more niche loophole.
I quite like the spirit of the 2 hour no quibble refund policy. It does still have many problems, but being able to play for 48 hours and then refund no-questions-asked was for sure never intentional.
Your Advanced Access and Early Access playtime now counts against the two-hour refund limit.
fair enough
I assumed this was always the case
I accidentally used this loophole with Starfield.
Wrote a whole thing pleading my case thinking there might be a slim chance of it getting approved since I was considerably over the 2 hour limit. But it ended up just getting auto approved within an hour or two.
I was initially shocked, but quickly realized what happened.
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