Hmmm... I'm on the fence on this.

I believe I voted for early access in the survey ages ago but now that I think about it.... I'm not sure. In theory it's a good thing, but we all know there are "rotten apples" out there and that complicates things. I've experienced "rotten apples" first hand on Kickstarter when things were promised... including drm-free release but now several months (a year?) after release there's still no sign of it.

However, I've also seen proper developers hand out Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2 so perhaps this is not all bad.

For now, I'll only buy "games in development"-games from people or developers I can vouch personally for.

I'd worry about trusting the developer before worrying about Valve. Valve is not the one that's pushing out patches for these titles.

Well but steam let's all kinds of garbage in, the hope here is that GoG doesn't.

This is nonsensical. You can't support a game in development and expect to enforce its completion to your standard. Some games just don't get finished. Some games change from whoa to meh. Companies go bankrupt. If you can't take a risk, InDev is not for you.

Neither GOG nor the devs can afford to offer refunds all the way until completion, because the InDev money gets used for the development of the game. It's not okay, it's financial suicide to allow people to play the final RC and claim a refund. Don't buy a game if you aren't happy with the state it's currently in. The most GOG can do is to ensure that if things go askew, a buyer who was liking the game up to a moment will still have access to the version they liked.

It's a start.

I like that GOG is moving in a direction that's more supportive of offering different games. This is a good thing.

Aliens vs. Predator was kind of an Early Access game too. The gam itself is pretty old, but it was released for a Galaxy multiplayer test.

I was thinking quite a bit differently.

First of all, developers don't want that kind of customer protection. What's the point of selling your game in an unfinished state if all the revenue could go poof less than two weeks later? Steam doesn't do it that way, which makes Steam the more attractive platform for any kind of venditio praecox. I've argued before that Early Access plus curation/customer protection doesn't work. Developers who can will always opt for the greater platform, the farther reach and more secure money. There's no USP for developers in what GoG attempts right now, at least none that I'm aware of. And they add to that more rights for the customer.

That's commendable!
And it's risky.

However, piracy – not as an actually existing problem, and more as something assumed to be a problem on GOG's version of Early Access by developers – may be yet another detriment to the success of this service.

Are people in this digital age really hurting for finished, quality games to play such that they will beta test for free various games in various stages of development being sold as, "Early Access" titles as if getting to access unfinished software early is some sort of privilege worth paying for?

Really?

What is wrong with people? Does their hard earned money have no value to them?

I cannot for the life of me understand this and I certainly do not approve of it. It just clutters the store (like Steam) with a lot of crap I would not touch with a ten foot pole for free, never mind pay for it.

Give me games that are good and are finished. I will gladly pay for those.

Bad move GOG. Be different from Steam, not like it.

I also disapprove greatly of advertising GOG Galaxy as being useful in concert with unfinished software where Galaxy itself is unfinished software. Galaxy should not be promoted like it is ready for prime time when it is not even done yet and therefore is only suitable for people who like playing with stuff early and accept what goes with that (issues, bugs, etc.) not the main customer base. It's misleading to promote Galaxy like everyone should be using it at this time. They shouldn't. It isn't done. What is wrong with you guys? You are promoting a less than optimal customer experience rather than properly finishing the client and then promoting. It should only be promoted as a beta test (and that's stretching it since it isn't feature complete) with full disclosure of what that really means to users.

I keep offering feedback like this but it falls on deaf ears unfortunately. I consider this whole thing to be a mistake. 14 days is not enough to protect people from long development cycles that may never come to a complete, finished, quality game for one thing. This very scenario has played itself out over and over on Steam but apparently no lesson is learned here from observing what's gone on there.

If you can't tell if you're happy with the game within 14 days of a money back guarantee, no completed game will help you with that problem.

The only other thing to consider I suppose would be perhaps presenting a means to roll back to certain versions of your game in case the impossible happens after that refund period is over and the game is updated a certain unfavorable way perhaps.

Other than that, great stuff.

PS I've got a few early access games such as Starbound, Project Zomboid and Grim Dawn and aside from having to restart or create a new character on some big updates there are plenty of very good games on Early Access such as those aforementioned. I believe even Inxile Entertainment are doing it with the new Torment game and its causing no bad harm. In fact some of these games are more like complete games with light game breaking / MMO style updates, some will be sh*t but all that I've purchased have given me my monies worth so I'm all for it done right.

I meant some devs on steam, but you're right.
Glad to see in here that a huge amount of dudes won't really care about games in dev titles.
That brings a lot of possibilities, too, in future patches and stuff!

Some games are more suitable for such approach. Consider for example something like Star Citizen (the MMO part of it). It's in constant development, and influx of early adopters and testers is like a continuous form of crowdfunding which they use to actually develop the game. I guess in such cases it makes sense and is fair for everyone. But in other cases such model doesn't really fit. Especially as I said above - for story intensive games (because of spoilers).

Well it could be positive for the customer and GoG as in such that only devs with some faith in their products and trust in their customers show up, mind you could.

Hell no!
Just look at Ashes of the Singularity... it's the cubic zirconia of games in development titles, I'd say! ;D

Starbound was the only game I bought that was (and still is) in Early Access, and that's good enough for me as far as this trend goes.

Even with the 14 day return policy here I'm not that interested in jumping back in.

Oh well, maybe when some of them are officially out of Early Access I'll check them out...assuming that they'll get finished.