The golden rule of Early Access for me is to treat the current state of the game as if it’s all there will ever be.
If an early access game is $10 and I look at it and think “Yeah I can get $10 of fun out of this,” then it’s a good buy.
If the game actually makes it through to full release with a bunch more content and polish, that’s just bonus value I never truly expected to see.
The golden rule of Early Access for me is to treat the current state of the game as if it’s all there will ever be.
This is the real way to approach it. Any promised content should be considered bonus, because the project could fall apart due to any number of reasons, many outside the control of the devs.
With all the complaints you’d think people would know better than run to buy smoke.
People just need to get better about looking into early access games before they buy them. I’ve bought like a half dozen EA games and don’t have a single complaint about them. Rimworld, factorio, satisfactory, and subnautica (E: and Hades, and Minecraft if you wanna stretch the definition a bit, but I bought it well before 1.0) all come to mind when I think of the EA games I’ve bought and hit 1.0, and I love the hell out of them. I’ve even got a few that Astro Colony and Dyson Sphere Program are a couple I like that haven’t hit 1.0 yet, and they’re still really fun to play.
All of those titles I researched a lot before I bought them. If you’re buying shovelware, that’s a you issue and not an Early Access issue
TL;DR: git gud and do your research, scrubs
Minecraft, Baldurs Gate 3 and Hades bad?
Satisfactory also lived up to its name throughout its development.
Project Zomboid also excelled expectations after 1.0
PZ is still in EA. WDYM?
KFC RTFM? TTFN BSD IHOP!
Also fits perfectly with the public release of iOS 26….
Should have been named Vista 2.0. …
