It should be marketed as beta test. I get not wanting to give out game for free or needing some funding to finish it, but its still an unfishished product.
IMO it should be something like so;
Free to play for 5 hours or up to a certain level/about 20% play complete depending on the game style.
pay to access rest of game. Full refund available any time or up to 15hrs/80% of game. With warning that stops game play until player is fully notified “if you keep playing past this point, you can not refund”
players can be rewarded for participating as a beta tester if they actually provide constructive feedback.
those rewards could be simply unlocking more time to play/levels, and a certain point they “earn” the whole game. Rewards can not be in-game advatages. Cosmetics is okay.
Once game is released, standard refund rules take affect.
if you paid for early access then it transfers to released game. If Dev try something sketchy like list the game under a new store page, any one who downloaded it regardless of payment will get a free key and Dev will be banned from listing anything early access.
reviews from early access will be separated from release to keep outdated user feedback out of the mix.
Just throwing out a few ideas, trying to keep it fair to both dev and player, but obviously I’m not a game business expert.
pay to access rest of game. Full refund available any time or up to 15hrs/80% of game. With warning that stops game play until player is fully notified “if you keep playing past this point, you can not refund”
That’s kind of the point.
If you don’t want to make the commitment to finishing the game, don’t charge people for early access.
You could make hurt less by offering partial refunds
-100% refund at 50% complete
-20% refund at 80% complete
And whatever’s in between.
The entire point is to encourage the developer to keep making the game. If the developer stops developing or starts makes garbage their funding will be at risk.
The main concern is collections. If the developer runs away with the money, or just runs out of funds and can’t finish and can’t refund everybody, then yeah its kinda fucked.
Yes. In my opinion it’s fine that they want to make some money with their unfinished game. Game development is expensive and esspecially for smaller studios early acces is one way to get funds before the game is finished. What I have a problem with is that some early access games are still full price for an unfiniahed game. And a lot worse than that are those games that release as finished games, but that are not in a state you would expect. So basically early access in disguise.
It should be marketed as beta test. I get not wanting to give out game for free or needing some funding to finish it, but its still an unfishished product.
IMO it should be something like so;
Just throwing out a few ideas, trying to keep it fair to both dev and player, but obviously I’m not a game business expert.
That would fuck over devs so hard I think
That’s kind of the point. If you don’t want to make the commitment to finishing the game, don’t charge people for early access.
You could make hurt less by offering partial refunds -100% refund at 50% complete -20% refund at 80% complete And whatever’s in between.
The entire point is to encourage the developer to keep making the game. If the developer stops developing or starts makes garbage their funding will be at risk.
The main concern is collections. If the developer runs away with the money, or just runs out of funds and can’t finish and can’t refund everybody, then yeah its kinda fucked.
Yes. In my opinion it’s fine that they want to make some money with their unfinished game. Game development is expensive and esspecially for smaller studios early acces is one way to get funds before the game is finished. What I have a problem with is that some early access games are still full price for an unfiniahed game. And a lot worse than that are those games that release as finished games, but that are not in a state you would expect. So basically early access in disguise.