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[ChairmanPoo]

I'd certainly feel differently if I had to buy them

Problem is the market's swarmed by this kind of things

[Sirus]

How is it a problem, exactly? In what way does offering early access directly impact you?

[BigD145]

You have to slog through the early access offerings mixed right in with the full releases.

Problem is the market's swarmed by this kind of things

[Sappho]

Is it not possible to filter "early access" out of the list? If not, then the problem is with the organization of the storefront, not with the availability of early access titles.

[hector13]

How is it a problem, exactly? In what way does offering early access directly impact you?

It's kinda like paying a builder when they're halfway through actually building something... there's no real need for them to continue working to their best as they've already been paid.

[Rolan7]

That's an issue with early access, not with GOG offering early access titles.
It really doesn't bother me either, it's just ironic given their name.  Sorta... runs against their supposed brand?  But they were already doing that with completed indie games, and that worked pretty well for my needs, so meh.

[Flying Dice]

Steam has an Early Access tag. It's visible on the store crawl. Because it's also early in the alphabet, it tends to show up at the front of tag lists. In case you somehow miss it, there's also a big, highly-visible "Early Access" banner on EA game pages.

Honestly the real problem is with consumers who don't understand that "early access" "alpha access" &c. means "THE GAME AIN'T DONE BAKIN' YET YA MORON".

Buying into early access, alpha/beta, &c. is fundamentally a gamble. You're paying a lower price for access to an incomplete development build and theoretically the complete game somewhere down the line. It's a good way for smaller devs to stay afloat before launch, and a good way for fans to support things that might not otherwise get made, or which would have been much more limited in scope without the extra pre-launch funding (see: the new Battletech game).

If you don't understand that early access purchasing, KS backing, and all the other forms of this shit is you making a bet that the dev will come through with a game you want (meaning that you get a good game for less than full price) combined with you paying to get access to the game while it's still in development, if you for whatever reason think that buying into EA is the exact same thing as buying a game post-launch, you should give the credit card back to your parents/spouse/dog because you clearly don't deserve to have one.

I'm not saying that there aren't devs that have stolen funding and ran, or that there aren't EA games that have failed. I'm saying that that's something which anyone even remotely familiar with the industry (or basic human nature) should know can happen, and something that EA buyers should have thought about before they spent their money. If you don't trust a dev to follow through all the way to release, don't give them your money. If there's really this overwhelming trend of untrustworthy EA devs, then everyone should just stop buying EA games from them and the problem will solve itself. 

[Persus13]

How is it a problem, exactly? In what way does offering early access directly impact you?

It's kinda like paying a builder when they're halfway through actually building something... there's no real need for them to continue working to their best as they've already been paid.

Try this next time you pay a builder and see what happens. I can guarantee you that 90% or so of the builders will finish the job.

[hector13]

How is it a problem, exactly? In what way does offering early access directly impact you?

It's kinda like paying a builder when they're halfway through actually building something... there's no real need for them to continue working to their best as they've already been paid.

Try this next time you pay a builder and see what happens. I can guarantee you that 90% or so of the builders will finish the job.

'tis not what I said. They have no need to do things well at that point.

Also, that 10% mang.

[Sirus]

How is it a problem, exactly? In what way does offering early access directly impact you?

It's kinda like paying a builder when they're halfway through actually building something... there's no real need for them to continue working to their best as they've already been paid.

According to my dad who works in construction, that's basically how it works. The contractor gets a down-payment, and further expenses are paid on a monthly schedule.

[TheBiggerFish]

Yeah.  They have to pay their expenses on the project, too.

[hector13]

How is it a problem, exactly? In what way does offering early access directly impact you?

It's kinda like paying a builder when they're halfway through actually building something... there's no real need for them to continue working to their best as they've already been paid.

According to my dad who works in construction, that's basically how it works. The contractor gets a down-payment, and further expenses are paid on a monthly schedule.

And using a poor analogy makes my point invalid then?

[Shadowlord]

Flying Dice: Unless you're paying more to get into alpha/beta, of course. Like with some f2p games, where you have to pay to get in before they open to the public (the Ghost in the Shell FPS is an example), or the more egregious EA games like Planetary Annihilation, where if you wanted to get it while it was in alpha it was $90, decreasing through successive stages, and despite that massive money grab, they released 1.0 with major features missing!

BigD145: You can't be seeing all that many, can you? Or have you bought enough of them that steam is showing you more of them than fully released games?

I just clicked through my Queue, and was only shown 3 early access games.

Other than that, I saw:
* Move Or Die, which I added to my wishlist because it has four player local MP.
* Crashlands, which appears to be some kind of isometric rpg with a 93% positive rating. Skipped for now.
* Some sort of boxing game with revenge for murder of parent as cliched character origin story. Clicked not interested.
* 5 AAA games, of which I was only interested in one (Rise of the Tomb Raider), but could not run it anyways because the system requirements had been increased from the previous game. The other AAA games were Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege (not interested), Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (not interested), Resident Evil 0 / biohazard 0 HD Remaster (definitely not interested), Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut (not interested). I'm assuming they're AAA games, anyways. They have famous names. Maybe the Homeworld and Shadowrun ones don't count because they were crowdfunded? I don't know.

[Sirus]

How is it a problem, exactly? In what way does offering early access directly impact you?

It's kinda like paying a builder when they're halfway through actually building something... there's no real need for them to continue working to their best as they've already been paid.

According to my dad who works in construction, that's basically how it works. The contractor gets a down-payment, and further expenses are paid on a monthly schedule.

And using a poor analogy makes my point invalid then?

It certainly doesn't lend any weight to your point.

[Persus13]

Actually its a great analogy for games that need upfront costs but don't have a company to provide the initial funding. And that's the point of some games that go up for early access. The problem is that I would imagine there's more regulations and laws and contracts and human interaction for preventing constructors from running off with people's money than there are stopping early access titles from running off with people's money.