Yes, quite a few of them are. It's pretty sad when the winner for honest intent is a company like Konami that takes everything that people cared about and warps it into a way to get more people on gambling machines.
They might be contemptible, ungrateful shitbags who happily disregard the people who made them into the company they are today, but at least they've made it clear that they don't give a damn about anything but themselves, their business plan and making as much money as possible.

Yeah, I saw that too. That's actually one of the things that's kept me from grabbing Starcrawlers. Too much confusion on some things, not enough full-on communication for my liking.
And with my backlog, I can afford to wait, or at least impulse buy other things like a lunatic instead.

No idea on the In-Dev DLC thing. That one doesn't sit well with me, at all. If I was making a game and charging money for a beta version, you can believe I'd be spending every second getting it up to a full release. I wouldn't even be thinking about DLC.

It's a combined blame. The developers are the root of the problem, while Steam blindly facilitates their bullshit since they don't care about anything but more money in the end. If a game's good? Yay. If it's bad? Oh well, not their problem.

I think that at the very least, people will widely lose faith in the Early Access/In-Dev/whatever process all together. Steam's already a joke in the quality assurance department, and Early Access has a fair bit to do with that feeling.

Have a nice day, Owl! Glad to see plenty of smiles on your face ;-) Hopefully the afternoon is much better for you. Bon courage with your work, and with everything.
**Extra big crushing hug**

Oh dear, Digital Homicide is correct... There's been a virtual murder here. And the victim is quality control. Killed by irony.

You truly are evil!

Admit it, you were saving it for just such an occassion.

I dunno much about Catholicism, but I kinda figure every religion does it pretty well. Isn't that the whole point? Guilt people into going to church, paying the church, doing everything they say...
If it weren't for guilt, I wouldn't have spent a single minute in church (I hated going to church. Every time. I don't believe any of my friends who say they go because it is "fulfilling" or whatever.... or maybe I'm just a bad person :-))

But catholics have original sin. Which protestants deny and... I don't really know, I tend to agree with Dawkins when it comes to religion.

The Japanese companies are very strage at the moment. They seem to be out of touch with anything outside of Japan. I guess they do business their way and think that is the right way when it comes to internatonal markets. I read a little on what Konami has been up to. Very sad really, given some of the great games they have published. Although I was not a fan of the more recent Metal Gear and Silent Hill games. But the older ones where incredible games.

I wonder why GOG let them on given their record so far with miscommunication. I wonder if GOG demands a timeframe before letting them on here, some kind of guarantee that the game won't be deliberately kept in early access just so that they get even more excuses for the game being bad. Probably not. GOG won't care as long as they keep getting their cut of the sales and as long as people keep buying it. They have sold finished games on here that they knew where broken (sometimes game breaking), so why should they care about early access games.

I don't think I would class it as DLC. I think they are just greedy and are trying to make a kind of early early access. You pay to test an old beta, but then have to pay again to test the latest beta. It just seems like another money making sceme to me.

I agree, Steam just doesn't care, but it is the developers who are flooding the place with games that look like their first ever attempt at programming. I guess with things like Unity which lets you make "games" with little knowledge it was to be expected. I did hope that with the refunds Steam would make more effort, but as we talked about before, if Steam does keep their cut, which I think they would, then they have nothing at all to lose.

Quite a few already have it seems. I have seen lots of people say they won't buy early access or back a crowd funding game. Some out of common sense or principle, others due to them being burned before. But sadly for everyone like that there are 10 more with money burning a hole in their pockets.

I didn't notice this until you mentioned it. I've been pretty chill about these in-dev games, and even bought one for myself (thanks to my inability to say "no" ;-p)
But that... DLC to test early features... for an early access game? >__o I think greediness in game development just sank to a new low. That is massively plucked up. That is a developer I will stay far, far away from.

-laughing hard- What timing. Having a discussion on shitty independent developers, and you mention one of the worst I've ever seen.
I'll just say that I hope you at least went to one of the nicer parts.

As I said to Crow, it feels less like DLC to me and more like early early access. They sell the old beta as early access, but to get the current beta you have to pay more for the early early access. I wonder if this will become the new scam. You pay early access for the stable beta, but you have to pay again for the test beta, which is what you were supposed to get on early access anyway.

You should know, it's all your fault. We should blame you for everything instead of ElT.

Santa Monica. I was eight, didn't know the language and everything felt like a magical wonderland, up to and including the happy meal toys, the three visits to Disneyland didn't hurt that impression either.

But I've always been weirded out by the "sunny california" meme. I thought the weather was pretty much the same as back home, milder in fact.
------
And you go stand in a corner and think about what you've done...
And quit mumbling "worth it!"

Do +1 the Crow folks, He must be reminded that no evil deed goes unrewarded.

That's true. Mormons don't.
Personally, I don't think science can explain some of what Dawkins has done. It proves that there is a higher power ;-)

(Chocolate Thunder!! \o/)

Oh definitely. that right there is irrefutable proof.

It's a mixed bag. Nintendo's trying to put another console together to get the taste of Wii-U out of people's mouths, Square-Enix is busy chopping every upcoming game they can into salable pieces. Capcom seems to be doing better, happier customers along with Street Fighter 5 on the way to be their flagship product for years to come.

Yes, Konami is doing a great job of stopping legendary franchises in their tracks. For such greedy people, they seem to have a strong aversion to making money. Maybe it's just too hard for them. They'd rather go the cheapest, easiest way they can.

I'm thinking that GOG's been doing quite a bit of information gathering on the In-Dev games. They stand to take a massive financial and PR hit if they don't stand behind their word of doing Early Access properly.
Every single article or video I've seen on the subject, they all mention Steam's massive failures versus GOG's intent to apply some kind of quality control. All that attention will turn in a second if In-Dev games get screwed up.

That's true. Can't sit and play the GOG fanboy, no matter how many games I've bought from them. They've messed up more than once, then had to backtrack and try to fix things.
But if they mess up their version of Early Access, they stand to lose lots and lots of money as customer confidence dries up entirely. They have a very good reason to stay on top of the situation.

Okay...hadn't looked at that title since it's not my thing. The developer essentially sectioned off their pre-pre-alpha content behind a paywall.
Wow.
That is really godsdamned bad.

Steam will only start caring when the amount of effort and money involved in giving refunds becomes greater than the effort needed to weed out the broken crap, the scammers, the procrastinators, the chronic "it'll be out soon, promise!" jackasses.

Yes, that's a pretty frequent statement. It's all a big gamble in the end. If people would understand that, I think that'd be a good step in the right direction.

Additional - Sitting in this chair freezing my ass off is starting to hurt. Need sleep.
Have a good day, everyone. =)

I'm going to wax philosophical here for a bit, please bear with it.
Language shapes thought.
The japanese language is weird.
Ergo... tentacles!

But GOG has not really had a spotless record when it comes to the quality of their service or the games they host. Like I said, some games are/were broken for quite some time, yet GOG continued to sell the game. They made it clear that there is no guarantee the in development games will ever be releases. I would think GOG can get away with a few screw ups when you compare them to the amount Steam has had over early access. I guess time will tell, I just hope these early access games don't effect the amount of older and full release games we get. If it is an addition then great, but if it starts to effect the main store then that is not so good.

I have never understood fanboys. I mean I like GOG as a service, but I am not blind to how they behave and the lack of quality with some things. I tend to stick to games from GOG as I don't like Steam, I have bought a few DRM free games from Humble if they are not here, but if they are here I tend to wait for a sale to get them here as I do like GOG on the whole and I like my games all in one place. I do hope early access will work out for GOG, and that they keep it curated and perhaps it if works well it will bring more customers and could possibly make Steam improve a few things, which I doubt, Steam is too large at the moment to care.

Let's see if other early access developers do the same and start to put paywalls up. It just seem ridiculous to go early access then charge again for the service early access is supposed to provide. But that is not the greediest thing I have seen in gaming, if nothing else they are getting worse for their greed in the gaming industry.

Steam is probably what, 90% of the market, 80% minimum? As long as they have such a market share they won't care. Too many gamers are happy with Steam and their service, which is fine, I am not hating on anyone that likes Steam, but it would be nice to see them improve their service, and of course, get rid of all that DRM. :-)

I always think of Kickstarter as an investment, so there is more of a risk with that. But early access seemed a little different, there is a product that is kind of done, it should just need a bit more investment and work. But more and more just release pre-alpha versions rather than beta or even full alpha.

I once read that learning Japanese is similar to learning Spanish as the pronunciations are quite similar. I am not sure how accurate that is, or if I am remembering it correctly, so if I am wrong then just ignore me. :-)

Ah yes, the tentacles. Those poor school girls of Japan, constantly at risk of random sex starved tentacles. But I guess they need something to take their minds of their giant boobs which must give them horrible back pains. :-)