Early Access on Steam: While 61% of games released on Early Access eventually leave that stage, nearly 7,000 games remain stuck in Early Access.
When buying a game in Early Access, we always take a certain risk. Some interesting data has just emerged about what that actually looks like on Steam.
The blogger Gamer of Passion calculated that there are still 12,320 games in Early Access, and 6,898 of them have a Steam warning indicating that they haven't been updated in over 12 months. This represents nearly 7,000 projects that appear to be frozen or abandoned.
The other side of the coin is more optimistic. Of the over 10,000 games that entered Early Access between 2013 and 2023 and have at least 10 reviews, 61% have left Early Access, and mostly within three years. However, players point out that the "version 1.0" is sometimes just the last patch before the project is abandoned. Furthermore, one-third of these games stopped being updated or were removed from sale even earlier.
Here are a few numbers that surprised me: only 21 games that have been in Early Access for at least 10 years are still being developed (including Project Zomboid and BeamNG.drive). A game that doesn't leave Early Access after three years has approximately a 1-in-5 chance of eventually being fully released within the next five years.
An important caveat: this analysis is based solely on what Steam shows. Some developers update their games elsewhere. An example is the Polish RPG Dungeons of the Amber Griffin, which hasn't received updates on Steam for over a year, while the project team has been publishing smaller patches and new screenshots on Discord.
The author of the analysis calls Early Access "a blessing and a curse for the industry" and advises doing your research before buying. I completely agree: before buying a game in Early Access, it's worth checking the date of the last update and whether the developers are even responsive.
Full details: https://gamerofpassion.com/steam-early-access-study/
Source: GRYOnline.pl
The blogger Gamer of Passion calculated that there are still 12,320 games in Early Access, and 6,898 of them have a Steam warning indicating that they haven't been updated in over 12 months. This represents nearly 7,000 projects that appear to be frozen or abandoned.
The other side of the coin is more optimistic. Of the over 10,000 games that entered Early Access between 2013 and 2023 and have at least 10 reviews, 61% have left Early Access, and mostly within three years. However, players point out that the "version 1.0" is sometimes just the last patch before the project is abandoned. Furthermore, one-third of these games stopped being updated or were removed from sale even earlier.
Here are a few numbers that surprised me: only 21 games that have been in Early Access for at least 10 years are still being developed (including Project Zomboid and BeamNG.drive). A game that doesn't leave Early Access after three years has approximately a 1-in-5 chance of eventually being fully released within the next five years.
An important caveat: this analysis is based solely on what Steam shows. Some developers update their games elsewhere. An example is the Polish RPG Dungeons of the Amber Griffin, which hasn't received updates on Steam for over a year, while the project team has been publishing smaller patches and new screenshots on Discord.
The author of the analysis calls Early Access "a blessing and a curse for the industry" and advises doing your research before buying. I completely agree: before buying a game in Early Access, it's worth checking the date of the last update and whether the developers are even responsive.
Full details: https://gamerofpassion.com/steam-early-access-study/
Source: GRYOnline.pl
Comments 0
Leave the first comment, in any language.
Log in to comment