What are your opinions on buying unfinished games (in alpha/beta/whatever)? the main game I want to highlight is prison architect, its a game that highly interests me and I cant wait to play it. But I want to play it in a finished state.

I'm just a little baffled. On the steam store its currently 50% off, and its been on sale a few times in the last few months, but its not even a finished game yet! I think its disingenuous to put an unfinished game up for sale and even at a discount before its officially finished.

I trust the introversion software developers, i have been following them for a while, but I think this sets a bad precedent. I feel like it will start a trend of small developers selling unfinished broken games where they have no intention of finishing it once they hit a comfortable level of sales. They already have your money so what incentive is there to continue development?

its just generally misleading too.

Just like in the other thread about the same thing... if you don't want to buy it until it's finished, don't buy it until it's finished.

@joshwent: The challenge is to figure out what you want, which often includes things like curiosity about the internet hype and the desire not to be swindled. Naturally there is a great deal of ambiguity.

Discounting Early Access games seems strange indeed, though it appears to be a kind of price adjustment. The initial price of Prison Architect was a bit high for early access.

I think the incentive, among most honest developers, is to put out a finished product with a certain kind of polish. If you aim to trick people and make a quick cash grab you will most likely not be a long-lived developer.

That said, I'm not buying into early access (except from some bad expections in the past). Even if they have the best intentions, anything can still happen during development that result in a bad or unfinished game.

That is why you look these early access games up on YouTube. I bought several games like that. If something interests me I will look up lets plays with commentary about the state of the game and will then decide If I want to buy it now or later for a higher price.

Depends on the game, some of them are just bad. Wasteland 2 for example released "early access" but was asking for 59.99. What kind of early access is that? Pay me full retail for a game still in beta??? Then others aren't so bad like Starbound which honestly is already pretty complete (at least it has as much as terrarria) and it's early access is only 15 bucks which is probably a little less than the final product will go for.

Personally I think in general it is better to avoid these types of games though. Many of them are just money grabs and offering games that are still pure beta and mostly broken.

There is a reason for wasteland 2 to be so expensive. The former Backer level was 50 or 55$ for early Alpha/Beta and that is why they could not go lower on early acess as well. It was a very fair decision. Also the game will not cost 50-60$ when it finally releases. It is just for the early Alpha/Beta so people who backed this game early do not feel betrayed..

And it is still asking full retail for a game that is in beta that probably won't be worth 30 when it is done because they went over budget and need to find more funding for other kickstarter projects.

@karkarov: Because they can not go lower without pissing off the actual backers.... And the full game will be like 30$ in the end. Also they did not went over budget. Where do you even get these infos...

I have seen YouTube videos of people playing unfinished games, especially the ones featuring Sonic the Hedgehog.

Steam Early access made me have a lot of them. Its interesting to play early alpha but then often I lose interest in the games and delete them saying I will wait for the full experience.

This whole alpha business is shit IMO, every other game on steam is in 'alpha'. Sure I could wait but all of the hype surrounding these games will be long gone by the time the game officially releases, and so will the multiplayer base. The one game I have bought in an alpha state is Space base DF9 and I don't care to play any more of that IMO, its fine and I am sure it will get better but I have already burned out.

I don't really have a problem with it. It doesn't seem any more gross than Kickstarter campaigns or developers selling broken-ass, full-priced games that they have to apologize for later. I feel like Early Access is arguably a better choice than both of those options. The only thing that would be cause for concern is if the developers don't seem to have a plan and/or go dark for frequent, long periods of time with little to show for their absence. Thankfully, you can gain a decent idea of both those things just by glancing at the game's Steam page/forum.

I've only bought 1 early access game so far, Blade Symphony, and my experience has been rather pleasant. The developers are always posting in the Steam forums and are generally open to discussing what they're currently working on and what's coming next. I can understand why one may be skeptical of the whole practice, but it's not all bad.

This type of early access to games is definitely buy at your own risk. I picked up Cube World earlier this year along with some friends and we all pretty much agreed to not do that again.

I guess it comes down to how bad you want to play the game and if you want to support the funding of the game development, which doesn't really guarantee you anything.

When it comes to early access games you just need to know what your buying, be prepared for anything, this means bugs, unifished content, slow updates ect... if you just simply don't want to buy games that aren't finished then you don't... plain and simple... its totally up to you if you want to buy a game early, think of it as an early type of pre order, but you get to actually test the game out first before its actually released... instead of buying into a beta... because your not, you're just getting access to a game that you would NEVER normally be able to see never lone play, and this is a reward for buying a game early... that's it.. plain and simple......... I like it.... but the risk is that all games go down this road and then end up not getting a finished product after several years from which by then you've moved onto other newer games, great example of this is Sword Of The Stars II........... but there are many examples of this..... don't like this kind of business practice, then vote with your wallet and don't buy the games till their finished... best advice anyone can have really....