Let's decide this: when is a game officially released?

Two part question that needs answers. If the wall of text is too much, refer to the bold sentences.

More and more we're seeing games that aren't finished being sold. Beta's you can buy into, pre-orders that allow early game access and even games in alpha being sold with early access privileges. A much used excuse, especially for the last one, when facing any issues is: '....but the game isn't done yet and therefor it isn't released'.

1; When is a game officially released?

A friend of mine bought an alpha game of Steam that has such poor frame rate performance that it is unplayable. The excuse I described above was given to her. It has nothing to do with her system, it is a common issue with this game. I'm asking, is this really an excuse that can be made?

My view: I think people need to let go of the idea that 'released' is a term that must go hand in hand with 'finished'. Saying the game isn't done and therefor not released is not an excuse for anything. I believe a game can be released, but not finished. I will buy into the idea that if you allow a certain set number of people to play your game you could argue the game isn't officially released. But when anyone is able to play your game in exchange for money; you can say it isn't released all you want, but it really is because their is no transaction difference between your game and any other game. Paying for something means it is a product available for purchase and certain expectations come with buying a product. Of course we can read and know that a game isn't finished yet and we are accepting that. Bugs, glitches, incomplete feature set... we acknowledge we are buying into this when we buy a 'pre-release' game. But I do believe we can expect the game to function properly. That criticism shouldn't be dismissed by pointing at the 'pre-release' label.

2; How should the answer to question 1 affect review scores and GOTY lists?

This is something I have been thinking about lately. I am really into Don't Starve. I think it is a great game. I've been playing that game ever since last year, 2012. The game has changed a lot since then and it was in pre-release state at that time. It has officially released this year, 2013, in February. I was playing the game back when Sanity wasn't even a concept in that game, which seems crazy right now.

But if the game changes so much and it is acknowledged that it wasn't finished, should the game be reviewed when it was pre-release? We can argue about the purpose of a review, but the one thing it definitely is, is purchasing advice. Is this worth my time and money? If a game is being sold for money and requires time to play, even if it is pre-release, shouldn't a review be logical to inform people? If so, how should the verdict be affecting, seeing as a game can go from 'shit' to 'great'?

Also, how should it affect GOTY lists? Can a critic take Don't Starve for the 2012 GOTY lists? He did play it back then and everyone could. It could have been the best experience he had, but not allowed to take it because a single line read 'unreleased'? If so, couldn't devs exploit this just by sitting on 'unreleased' games until they see the right time to release it for maximum awards and criticism?

I have no answer for this second question, it is a tough one.

When you are buying any of these 'early access' games you are just pre-ordering the finished game, the developer rewards your pre-order with an alpha/beta to show you what they are working on. The game is not released and any publication that reviews it like it has been released isn't doing the right thing. You can't see a review 6 months before a non early access game but you can pre-order it, so this is no different.

Saying that buying an alpha, expecting bugs, then complaining that there is bugs (in the case of a frame rate issue, yes that's a bug) doesn't make the argument anymore legitimate. Even steam recommends you to research on the forums and videos before you buy into early access.

Saying a game is 20xx's GOTY when its 20yy has no meaning anyway, GOTY's are pretty much redundant not long into the next year anyway. Once again though the game isn't released, even the bombcast has discussed this issue many times and each time coming with the same conclusion. Until the game is complete, it can't be reviewed.

A game is officially released when the developer of the game says that it is released. In general, this is when a "1.0" build is sold. That is generally the official release of a game.

As far as what point that reviewers should decide whether a game fits on their game of the year list, well... that's up to them. With various versions of games on different platforms, people could easily consider some games their game of 2011 or 2012 or 2013 depending on when they played it. Fez was one of my favorites of the year when it first came out on 360, but I wouldn't mind if someone considered the game as one of their favorites the next year when it came out on PC. It simply varies, and it's up to individual discretion.

@dark: I have to disagree with you on one thing, frame rate of 2-3 is not a bug. That's severe technical issues and I don't think you can sell a game in that state, finished or not. Asking money for that is not the right thing to do either.

I get where you are coming from with the rest of your points though. However, I have to question, why would any game that says it's not finished not be reviewed/criticized, while games that do not say that change just as much or sometimes even more over time? The obvious and most popular example is League of Legends. To my knowledge, no big gaming site has reviewed that game again after the huge amount of changes that happened to it. It isn't at all the same game today as it was when it was reviewed. Much moreso than these pre-release games that often do give a good idea of where the game is going.

For instance, I'm playing Prison Architect. Since I've been playing it, more features have been added, but the general idea is the same and nothing changes that dramatically. Why is that any different from frequent game updates? Since Don't Starve officially released in February, it has seen more changes to it that change the gameplay than when it was still pre-release.

Where exactly do you decide to make this cut off? You argue that a game cannot be reviewed until completed, but the truth is it might change, meaningfully, more in the months after official release than in the months between pre-release and official release. At this point, shouldn't you question what the point of your review is? Because if you only want to review complete games, like you said, you can't do that without backtracking to games you've previously reviewed and taking another look.

In short: does the word of the developer really mean that much? When you take two games they may both change as much while one of them was not officially released for period of time, while the other was. Why the distinction purely based on what a dev says?

I'm just asking.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with Dark. It's basically a pre-order with a bonus attached and usually sold at a discounted price, and reviewers shouldn't be giving scores for alpha or beta builds as though they are a full product. I think that some devs are abusing early access somewhat, in a few different ways, but it's fine in concept and ultimately you shouldn't buy a pre-release game if you aren't okay accepting the fact that it could be broken.

There's maybe an argument to be made for giving pre-release scores/reviews and changing those when the game updates, but that's a bunch of extra work for the reviewer to be continuously keeping up with the game's development, and it's likely to just muddy things more than it helps, especially if sites like Metacritic were to take the initial score and refuse to change it. It would also be likely to give the wrong impression to people who don't pay much attention, so even if the game is a 9/10 on official release, some people might still be remembering the time you gave it a 4 and assuming that still hasn't changed, because changing is not what review scores traditionally do. Even if it satisfies people who are angry that their alpha doesn't work, it would be irresponsible of reviewers and not really fair to the people who worked on the game.

"Released" hasn't meant "finished" in PC games for a long time, for anything but the most lazily-supported games. There are always post-release patches and there are always content updates, and those things have been fairly commonplace even before the days of Steam and digital downloads. It's always been fairly clear which version should be reviewed.

Bugs are literally technical issues, regardless of how severe they are. It is a severe bug that destroys playability, but it is still a bug by definition.

Regarding your bit about League of Legends (I don't want to quote a bunch of different paragraphs, this post is long enough as is), that game isn't sold. You said yourself that reviews should be purchasing advice, so it seems a little pointless to give purchasing advice for something that costs no money. There are already niche sites which do review individual champions or skins since those are what are being purchased, but that's already way outside the role of traditional gaming press sites.

The cutoff point for when a game is complete is where the developer says the cutoff point is. Full stop, no ambiguity at all. It's when they call their game released, which implies that they have enough confidence in the product to feel comfortable selling it and that they have enough confidence in it to subject it to reviews.

It seems to me like you're under the impression that the beta and alpha releases are the product being sold to you during early access - unless access to the game is taken away from you upon release and you have to buy it again, you are simply paying early for the official release version of the game. I think you could definitely argue that games like Prison Architect which nonsensically charge more during pre-release are an exception to that, but Prison Architect at least tries to make it very clear that it's in alpha, and charging more for early access is very much not the norm from what I've seen. Early access is not equivalent to buying a full game that receives continuous updates because in most cases you did not buy or pay for the beta build, you simply have access to it.

@zevvion: I believe Jeff answered this exact question in maybe a jar-time episode however, once the game is released and a score is attached that is it. Most reviewers will say that the game is still changing and some of these problems may be fixed in the future but at the time of review this is how it is.

Also FTP reviews are stupid, its free, just go play it >.> you don't need purchasing advice on something that's technically not purchasable.

I'm on the "it's released when they say it's released" team as well. All that matters for is our expectations, anyway. I think reviewers should respect that decision and review the games accordingly (as in, don't review a game when they don't want you to). Most game websites and magazines have preview features anyway. If they want to sit on the game forever before releasing it, they're not going to get the marketing that reviews and other such coverage could give them. It's up to them what they want to do with their game.

We as consumers should just spend more carefully in response. If you buy early access because you believe all the bad shit in the current build will be fixed by release, what are you doing?

But yeah, the distinction is becoming more and more meaningless. Now I just think in terms of what I'm getting right now in return for my money. I don't really care what the game is called anymore. It's not really my problem.

Its kinda hard to say because of alot of games coming from kickstarter, early access games and free to play games but I feel that when a game starts to charge money for either a build of the game or items (free to play model) then it is released. Its all subjective anyway.

It's released when the game is done. Version 1.0. Not "early access" not alpha or beta.

In regard to GOTY lists, it needs to take into consideration when the game is fully released. Not while it was in Beta.

I think we have to accept that with alpha and beta versions of games getting out there, "Released" is a term that can apply to games being distributed in various states, although unless specified otherwise, I still see it and use it to refer to the the official date on which the product is distributed to the public without still being in any kind of alpha or beta testing. As for games being "finished" I've actually thought that gamers have long had pretty broken ideas about that. I mean we can say a game is feature complete and relatively bug free and call that finished, but we have to accept that "finished" is a somewhat arbitrary judgement.

Games aren't like a food that you cook at a certain temperature for a certain time and then they're just done, there's basically always changes and fixes you can keep making, and new content you can keep adding. This is reflected in the fact that some ideas can get scrapped during development but the games still make it to market in a perfectly enjoyable state, while other games continue adding tons of updates after release even if the original game functioned fine. Often software stays in beta for a silly amount of time precisely because any finishing point would be somewhat arbitrary, so the developers end up seeing it as indefinitely unfinished.

I agree with you though that when people pay money for a product, regardless of whether it carries the "alpha" or "beta" label or whatever else, their products should be at least function basically, and that if the game is still in testing it needs to be made clear to customers exactly what problems they're likely to encounter with their game. As for reviews, I think that games can and should be professionally critiqued pre-release. If a purchase is there to be made then I think there's worth in providing potential customers for those products with an idea of how those products currently play. One of the difficulties however, is that when games are still in pre-release testing they can often change so fast that a single review never reflects the actual product for long, although this applies much more to alpha than beta and does vary based on the game and how far it is through testing. While we all understand that pre-release games are going to have their rough edges I also don't believe that reviewers have to pretend games are any more or less enjoyable than they actually are pre-release in any reviews or critiques. The quality of the game should be described just as it should be for any other game if it's to give customers a solid idea of what they're purchasing.

For GoTY lists I don't think there's a right or wrong way to do it, but I think each games press outlet needs to think seriously about whether pre-release games can be GoTY candidates for them. I could see some devs sitting on games for GoTY awards, but it seems a bit of a weird thing for people to go to huge lengths to accommodate though.

Agreed. Games are more like other artwork, with a somewhat arbitrary point of "being finished". It's whenever the creator decides to call it finished and perhaps chooses to stop messing with it further.

And as for pre-release products, I think it's a somewhat similar problem that reviews of MMOs have. The games can change so much over time that reviews somewhat have an expiration date on them as far as relevancy to the present game. Their relevance then becomes to a record of how things were at a point in time. In general, though, I have seen many reviewers decide that a "preliminary review" may be useful for a pre-release game and a "full review" for when something is announced as "version 1.0". We've seen that with notably changing titles like Minecraft and Don't Starve. I think that makes the most sense as long as someone reading a review is made aware of these facts.

A game is released when it says 1.0 on it.

Early access bullshit that you pay for is just a pricey beta, and thus not released. However! With shit like Dota2 and other such F2P games, those games are released as soon as they are taking actual money and this money stays in their system up to and past the public release. For example: I consider Hearthstone to be a released complete product, as they are taking money for it, which will not be returned upon actual public release. Even though it's limited access that game is finished.

Early access, betas/alphas, preview builds, <v1.0, etc... aren't officially released.

The thing I have a problem with is episodic games. I can never come to a good conclusion as to when those are 'released' - is each episode considered a separate release or is the whole season considered a release when all episodes are finished?

When it's available for play to the general populace. Anyone can pay for it and/or download it. If a game is labeled "early access" or "beta," you obviously take on the expectation that it's still a WIP, regardless of whether or not you're paying for it.

I think its getting ever more difficult to categorize software releases the same way we do with traditional tangible retail releases. Traditional retail products are usually "complete" on release which isn't always the case with software; you can keep adding features way after release.

So I don't think paying for the software necessarily means it's complete, that's up to the developer to decide. However, I do think developers should be ready accept criticism for a product they deem ready for wide release, regardless of if they're calling it complete or not.

That being said, I haven't come across too many cases where the developer is trying to trick consumers in to purchasing the game before its ready. They're pretty transparent about how it might contain a plethora of bugs.

Early access can effect someone's perception of the game though and spread some negativity regarding the product, but I think you'd be crazy not to expect that if you're a developer.