Traditionally, game publishers do not release unfinished versions of their products to the public, instead relying on in-house testing non-disclosure agreements.
In some cases, publishers have found ways to allow players to win or buy into access into a game's beta state in a controlled environment.
For example, an invitation to the beta version of the multiplayer portion of Halo 3 was bundled with the game Crackdown, contributing to the latter's strong sales.
Many smaller indie companies use personal funds, while larger ones may get investments from other sources, and more recently crowdfunding programs such as Kickstarter or Patreon have proven viable for both.
Minecraft continued to offer early access throughout its development period, assuring those that bought into it would receive the final version for free, which happened in November 2011.
[9] The Humble Bundle group has created a Humble Store that also provides storefront and distribution methods for indie gamers that wish to sell early access to games, and for developers looking to get on Steam, offers the ability to provide Steam redemption keys once these titles are listed at the storefront, while also incorporating a method to allow players to pay or tip the developer in addition to the base cost.
Sony Computer Entertainment stated in July 2014 that they considering creating an early access program for independent PlayStation 4 developers following the Steam model,[11] and launched this approach in September 2015 with the game Dungeon Defenders II.
Full release games such as No Man's Sky, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Sea of Thieves have been negatively labeled by critics as "early access" in this manner.
In such cases, these early access periods are typically not used for player feedback but to identify last minute software bugs or test server performance before the full release.
Many users, including Jim Sterling of The Escapist,[64] called out on both its developer Killing Day Studios for abusing the early access program and for Valve to remove the title for fraudulently representing gameplay.
[65] Another example is the Spacebase DF-9; while the development team from Double Fine had laid out plans for several features and gameplay improvements over time, Double Fine opted to end its full-time development, completing its early access and releasing a final product that while fully playable lacked many of the planned features; the company will continue to fix critical bugs with the game and will include support for user modifications via Steam's Workshop channel but will not create any new content for the game itself, disappointing many players of the game that were looking forwards to these planned features.
[66] Later on the Double Fine forums it was announced that there were no further plans for patches and there was no team assigned to the project[67] leaving Steam Workshop integration in limbo.
Double Fine's Tim Schafer stated that they opted for this solution as while DF-9 represented their first experiment with the early access approach, they had reached a point where the amount of money earned from sales of the game in early access were not covering the production costs, and the timeline to reach the planned goals would have been several years down the road.
[70] Games still in early access have generally not been considered for the industry's top awards, since they have technically not yet been published yet and received in-depth critical reviews.
[71][72] Gamasutra considered the concept of early access, particularly Steam's approach, as one of the five trends in 2013 that defined the direction that the video game industry was headed.
[78] Some players also worry about the "double dip" effect, in which a game may be promoted twice, first through its introduction on early access, and then on its subsequent full release.
Games with roguelike features appear well suited to take advantage of early access, allowing the developers to tweak the procedural generation systems with player feedback.
Several titles that have used Steam's Early Access in such a manner include Invisible, Inc., Nuclear Throne, Armello, Broforce, Prison Architect, Darkest Dungeon, Besiege, Infinifactory, Subnautica, and Ark: Survival Evolved.