I'm curious as to know how other people on the community think of reviews of Early Access games as they often deliver the lowest scores seemingly regardless of the game without any criticism of said game, instead focusing on the sole concept of early access.
It was especially something I noticed as I looked at the reviews of the new titles having been put on the front page earlier, like Starbound, Project Zomboid and Terratech.

Should it be okay to give ridiculously bad scores on e.a. games outright without explanation?

While annoying, if it's on sale, it's open to reviews imo.

Naturally dumb reviews are bad, but the community can downvote them I think

Yeah, if you release a game to Early Access, that's not the same as having an opt-in, semi-open beta. You're asking for money, in exchange for a game. It's totally fair to give an early access title one star for being a crap port of a bad engine with placeholder art and no direction, if that's what it is. Promises that you'll make the game better aren't worth crap when you've taken my money.

Of course, if you individually are invested in the game or the dev or the publisher or whatever, you can stump for it. Make your five star review about what a great game it will be eventually. There's nothing wrong with that, either.

While quality control would be nice, I'm sure someone would say that they're too tiny to allocate resources to something like that. And then losing paying customers by calling them stupid for their reviews after having offered a "no questions asked money back guarantee" anyway wouldn't be good for them. Stupid customers are still customers with some rights.

However in the case of some games such as Starbound, it's hardly a placeholder and I don't really see how it is much worse than a pre-order. Most of the early access games on GOG at the moment are actually worth being called finished products, yet there's still being added loads of new content to the games gradually.

My complaint is however more about going to a game, see the early access tag, then give it a review that goes like "In early access don't buy" and give it a single star. That's hardly fair isn't it?

It's as if the early access concept is getting a review, not the game, and therefore the game's reputation is suffering based on the fact that it is in development.

I don't really care, as this product is not for me.

Having said that, if a product is to be sold before it is complete then yes, reviews can and should be scathing. How else will the product be improved before it actually achieves saleable state?

In-Dev is an especially good reason GOG should make reviews editable.

Why's that? (Perhaps there could be a "view edits" option.)

If it doesn't represent the current product of course it should. Or at least be archived with the version number of the review if you absolutely have to keep the old outdated reviews.

You are both missing the point.

If the game is released as a saleable product, even though it is in development, reviews should and need to reflect the state it is released in as a saleable product.

I see it that simply.

I see nothing wrong with re-reviewing the product if improvements are made.

So if you pre-order a AAA game a year before it is released, should professional reviewers be allowed to release reviews based on the state it was in a year before the game was finished?
Normally unfinished products have so called review embargos to prevent games from getting bad reviews based on an outdated version.

But getting back on topic. As you see in the screenshot i created. There was a 1 star review only criticizing early access, not the game. No criticism of the game was made what so ever.

oO

I will try to put it as simply as I can.

If a game is released before it is finished and then put on the public domain as a saleable product, it deserves to be reviewed on in the state it was made a saleable product

As far as I am concerned, if you pre-order a game, even AAA, you can forget about what the actual review is when it is released, because you know, you have already paid for it.

You cannot place embargos on reviews. That is just cuckoo. A product gets released: a product gets reviewed. End of.

The one star review you mention, why shouldn't they be entitled to that opinion? They have clearly stated that their disapproval lies with unfinished promises- which is entirely the risk you take when you want to start paying for an unfinished product.

Got something to say? Say it.