Early Access Games on Steam
Starting in 2013, Steam allowed incomplete, playable games to be sold under the banner of its Early Access program. This allows the development studio to receive income, feedback and grow a community of players while a game is still in development.
Early Access has not been without criticism and controversy as games may languish in development for a lengthy unspecified time or shut down altogether if the revenue is not enough to complete the game. A year after the program launch, research firm EEDAR noted that only a quarter of the games which had entered Early Access had progressed to officially completed released versions.
More recently, students at Queens University in Kingston, Canada took an empirical approach and evaluated nearly 1,200 Early Access Games to glean insight into the program. Highlights of their findings include:
- 15% of games on Steam utilize the Early Access program with the monthly proportion of Early Access games released on the Steam platform increasing from 0.05 in 2013 to 0.20 in early 2016
- 34% of all Early Access games have left the program and only half of Early Access games available before 2014 have exited
- Incorporating SteamSpy’s owner data, it was found that the median number of owners was 11,270, 25% of the Early Access games had 47,950 owners, and 3% or 43 games with over one million owners
- A high majority (88%) of the developers listed indie among their games’ genres, which contrasted with 50% of non-Early Access games
- The top five gaming genres of Early Access games in descending order were action, adventure, strategy, RPG, and simulation
- A majority of the games (70%) that had been in Early Access had left under 365 days with the median being 225 days, noting length in Early Access did not impact the positive review rate of a game
- During Early Access, developers can expect higher discussion/forum activity, fewer game reviews and reviews to be more tolerant than reviews from players of the completed game
- Nearly half (48%) of the developers had the same median price after leaving Early Access, 30% increased their price and 21% decreased their price
They also noted some lessons learned: 1) it’s risky to use Early Access as a main source of funding as revenues may not be enough to sustain development, 2) a game should not be released too early in its development or players will not have much to play and review, 3) abandoning a game in Early Access can be damaging to the studio brand and 4) developers need to outline their plans and communicate them in a clear, timely fashion with their players.
Through our work with development studios and game publishers, DDM has encountered multiple mindsets regarding the release of games in an Early Access state. While there is no uniform consensus on the utility or strategy of bringing games from Early Access to full launch, it should be treated as an opportunity and risk simultaneously. Since the game will be available for purchase to your community, there is an expectation of games-as-a-service support in which the developer is transparent regarding development goals and progress.
The full study and methodology can be accessed via Research Gate here.