752
I propose 2024 is the year of early access games boycott.
Bring back completed games only.
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
752 points (89.3% liked)
Memes
45889 readers
1309 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Buying early access makes you an investor. Which has the possibility of the product failing. It is a bet, treat it as such.
What % of profits do you get if the game is a success?
That's the neat part, you don't!
You son of a bitch! I'm in!
Sometimes they're cheaper than launch price? Or you may get exclusive cosmetics? Idk
(Not saying it's worth it)
They very often are, with exceptions rare enough to cause a stir.
You get 100% of a successful game and hopefully helped the small studio to be in a position where they can make more good games thanks to the success of the first one.
Your profit is not weighted in money but a more diverse landscape when it comes to games.
And if you like games and see what AAA does to the scene, you should see that als something to strife for. Or am I mistaken?
You're investing in the quality of the game, not money.
It's more like an investment in infrastructure. The city isn't making a dime from repaving roads, but they certainly are useful. It's a bit of a gamble if they'll develop potholes or even get finnished sometimes, but people want roads.
What? City is absolutely making money from repaving roads. The businesses that use those roads pay taxes, people that work in those businesses pay taxes. Good infrastructure brings more businesses and more people and let's city grow. You put money in it and it brings benefits later. That's exactly what investment is.
And people stay productive by enjoying hobbies and playing games. It's an investment in infrastructure, just like fire, healthcare, police, power, water, transportation, etc.
Also, most roads in North America are cash negative, with many cities building new suburbs with high tax to pay for the roads in the previous suburb which are falling apart, which were built to pay for the next last suburb, on and on until the first car-centric suburbs were built in the 50s and 60s. Low density housing rarely pays for it's public utilities directly, needing to essentially be subsidised by city centers to be worth it, and then you replace business with parking lots and everything gets so much worse...
You can enjoy hobbies without paying for unfinished games, early access is completely besides the point here. You can buy games when those are ready and be equally productive. If you like early access games you're free to buy them, I have nothing against it. But it's not an 'investment'. It just a discount.
There are thousands of great game that wouldn't have got off the ground without early access, so not participating could absolutely change the quality of the final product. In many ways, early access in one step removed from crowdsourcing, which is an investment in an idea.
Investments aren't necessarily about leveraging capital to generate more capital. It would be a very sad life to live where everything must be categorized by ROI.