A year ago, I wrote about my changing relationship with Early Access titles on Steam. You can read the particulars if you’re interested, but the Spark’s Notes are as follows:
For a long time, I’d viewed Early Access titles as being low-quality products that I didn’t want to engage with. That was a perception that I’d developed thanks to a myriad of unsuccessful Early Access releases onto Steam when the program was first rolled out back in 2013.
However, many developers used Early Access to great success over the following decade. This helped to shift my perception away from being overly pessimistic.
In addition, I also started to recognize seasonal content updates, and balance patches as being akin to Early Access. Not in a literal sense, but both methods of development necessitate large content drops, and game updates. In some cases, these updates are so extreme that you might as well be playing a completely different game after the update goes live.
This change in perspective also helped to assuage the erroneous belief that I held wherein I assumed writing about Early Access games would be a waste of my time since they’re in a constant state of flux. As it would happen, many of the games that I’ve covered are in a state of flux, and, for the most part, that hasn’t devalued any of the articles that I’ve written about them.
As such, I made a point to actually play some Early Access titles over the following year.
Admittedly, this has resulted in some of the more enjoyable gaming experiences that I’ve had in the past 12 months. For example, Hades II is an absolute banger, and is poised to make it onto my Best of 2025 list irrespective of its status as an unfinished game. Timberborn, the beaver City-Builder, was likewise great, and is the most fun I’ve had with a conventional City-Builder since Cities: Skylines (though, the less conventional Against the Storm was also really good).
Anyway, the point of mentioning these Early Access titles was to highlight how I’ve been enjoying this newly removed restriction that I’d once placed upon myself.
Having said that, I recently finished playing through the Early Access of Grounded 2 with my wife, and have some thoughts. Or, rather, a singular thought:
Should Grounded 2 even be allowed to utilize Early Access?
No like…actually.
Grounded 2 is being co-developed by (Embracer Group owned) Eidos Montreal, and (Microsoft owned) Obsidian Entertainment. According to an interview on Polygon, the former is leading the charge, while the latter steers the ship. That’s a bit of an oversimplification of their relationship, but I think it’ll do for the purposes of this article.
In addition, Grounded 2 is being published by Microsoft given they own the intellectual property by way of owning Obsidian as a subsidiary, which they (Microsoft) purchased back in 2018.
It’s also worth noting here that Microsoft is an American corporation with an almost 4 trillion dollar market cap whose stock trades for an eye watering 500 USD per share. They’re also responsible for axing over 2000 jobs across the game’s industry in the past 3 years, and the closure of several studios. This, all while they’re engaged in a technological arm’s race to become the market leader in AI.
And that’s before mentioning the numerous genocide allegations against the company, which I’m not even equipped with the ability to write about in a meaningful capacity. Instead, I would encourage you to read articles on The Guardian, or Bloomberg by journalists who aren’t just repeating information secondhand (like I would be).
Embracer Group isn’t nearly as outlandish as Microsoft in terms of their financials, but they are equally responsible for shrinking the game’s industry in the past 3 years with around 2000 layoffs, and several studio closures of their own.
So…why exactly are these 2 juggernauts using Early Access to release a game? Surely they can afford to develop Grounded 2 behind closed doors, and release a finished product after completing several rounds of internal playtesting, and quality assurance.
I mention this because 1 of the key points I highlighted in my original article about Early Access is how beneficial it is to smaller, scrappier teams. Teams that aren’t flush with billions of dollars in venture capital money to help them develop, and ship a product. There’s no world where you can convince me that MICROSOFT can’t afford to shoulder the development costs of Grounded 2. Or any other project for that matter.
That’s why I got stuck on, and asked my initial question: should Grounded 2 be able to leverage Early Access? Microsoft, and Embracer surely have easy access to all of the benefits (funding, QA, playtesting, etc.) normally associated with using this development style. And neither of them need to leverage Early Access to enjoy those benefits.
Furthermore, historically speaking, Early Access has largely been utilized by smaller teams who otherwise couldn’t afford to fund the creation of their games. The few exceptions to this that I can think of off the top of my head are the original Grounded (again, Microsoft bankrolled), and Baldur’s Gate 3 which was a licensed game based on the popular Wizards of the Coast Dungeons & Dragons’ property of the same name. In both cases, it’s somewhat reasonable to assume that there was enough money behind the projects to where they wouldn’t need to use Early Access to help bridge the gap financially.
It also, low key, feels a bit like these bigger games are trying to encroach on a space that, previously, wasn’t open to them. And I’m using that word – encroach – deliberately. My fear is that smaller titles will struggle to leverage Early Access for its myriad of benefits if games with larger marketing budgets, like Grounded 2, start to swoop in and suck up all the air.
Obviously, there are already haves and have nots with Early Access. You’re not guaranteed any amount of success, nor an eager community of players to help you with development of your game. That said, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to envision a future where larger companies leverage their existing financial advantages to increase their chances of success while pushing their scrappier competitors who can’t afford to compete out of the space.
Though, as a slight counter-argument to any of this negative rambling, I do have to admit that what Obsidian, Eidos, and Microsoft are doing here is a lot more honest than what I’ve seen from other companies. Grounded 2 was released at a reduced 40 CAD price point, and is fully transparent about being an unfinished experience. There’s also a content roadmap that clearly defines where the development team is hoping to take the game over the next year of development instead of a list of nebulous promises.
That’s a far cry from several other high profile releases within the past several years. Games which promised the moon, while delivering a miniature replica of it. Games whose entire value proposition was contingent on the idea that they’d continue to receive multiple years of ongoing support, but which were unceremoniously torpedoed less than a year after being released.
Admittedly, that doesn’t feel like much of an upside to this whole situation. It’s like: woohoo yeah! At least the folks behind Grounded 2 are being honest about what it is, instead of pretending like it’s a full game only to abandon it when it fails to meet arbitrary financial targets. And the marketing people aren’t deliberately misleading consumers in a way that insulates them from regulators, and other consumer protection measures? This is the GOAT!
Sarcasm aside, I’m also acutely aware that I’m part of the problem for having participated. That point isn’t lost on me. Buying Grounded 2 when I could have given my money, and support to another developer makes me complicit in allowing billion (or trillion in Microsoft’s case) dollar companies to infiltrate Early Access.
I suppose that’s the first step though, isn’t it? Acknowledging that there might actually be a problem here, and being mindful of which titles I support in Early Access in the future. Specifically because some developers need my financial support, and feedback a lot more than Mr. Nedella’s subsidiaries do.
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Frostilyte Writes 
That’s a really interesting question. I feel that same kind hesitation in thinking about a title like that on Early Access. I agree that the reduced price point and professional roadmap are good, but they belie the problem you were trying to highlight earlier in the essay. To some extent the studios behind Grounded 2 are using the playerbase derived from Early Access to accomplish a goal that they normally would be paying for, and is that exchange really fair?
If collectively the players are serving as QA and playtesters and all of that (though of course only some players will report bugs or provide feedback that gets utilized), is 20-30 bucks fair compensation? And I think “compensation” is the correct term here, because it’s fundamentally asking players to perform a job.
Early Access is always going to be one of those troublesome things to talk about because bad actors exist. But in fairness, that’s true outside of Early Access – shovelware existed well before. But I find myself agreeing that its value as a system depends on its ability to help those who might otherwise not have a shot. If it’s a system that ends up helping larger studios cut down on costs (and if that makes it harder for smaller studios to get that handhold), then what’s the point?
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You know, I hadn’t even considered the monetary value of compensation for testing while I was writing. Which is wild because (as I’ve stated in other, older articles) I used to work in software. And just for comparisons sake, 30 USD would pay for about 2 (maybe 3) hours of time for someone working on QA at a professional level. If it was completely outsourced to a country with a lower quality of living (which is often the case) you’re looking at extending that time out to around a full day of work. That’s a drop in the ocean for the amount of time you’d realistically want to spend testing something as complex as a video game, especially 1 with the number of systems and moving parts that Grounded 2 has. Through that lens, this comparison is especially unfavourable.
But yeah – I don’t really think that there can be a definitive “correct” answer to this question. That’s a big part of why I thought it was so interesting in the first place, and why I decided to write about it.
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Damn, was about to comment that some developers seem to really want to get feedback from their players so they can balance features better and such… but then I read your comment and agree so much. It’s wild how it’s just become acceptable to have people pay for the ability to do free QA.
And yeah, of course people aren’t doing it as intensely as QA-folks do it, but still. Your point still stands.
I feel pretty ambivalent about Early Access myself too. Why play half a game now if I can play the full game later. I’d have to be really invested in a game/franchise to do that.
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Early access, in short could be seen as a cost-effective way to avoid taking huge risks especially to MS and their aversion of taking risks
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I definitely lean more toward your counterargument, and was thinking essentially the same before finishing reading:
I wish more big outfits would use the Early Access program.
Cities 2 could’ve benefitted from releasing with that that (if, for whatever reason, it had to release like it did at all). No Man’s Sky, the same — although who knows when they would’ve officially turned off the early access tag. Maybe never? xD
Oh and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.
And many others, I’m sure.
Now, would I just prefer they released in a properly finished and polished state? Absolutely.
But if we can’t have that, then next best is to honestly use the EA tagging, and not try pass off whereever they got up to by the point of their deadline hitting as the intended product.
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It’s funny that you say that because there’s a version of this article that exists, ONLY in my drafts, which has an entire extra ~500 word tangent that actually used games like No Man’s Sky as an example. Specifically, how Sony marketed, and pushed that game out in a completely unfinished state. Obviously using Early Access would have been a preferably alternative, instead of misleading consumers to buy a product that clearly wasn’t ready. Ultimately, I decided to cut the tangent so the article would flow better, and instead included a general example (live service games) where the reader can mentally fill in the gaps with whichever game resonates best for them.
But yeah – your point about other companies (especially larger ones) being more honest about where their games are at, and actually releasing them as unfinished products (under the Early Access banner) isn’t lost on me. Though it would seem that most of the larger players in the industry are total allergic to the idea of admitting that they’re shovelling an unfinished game out the door, and would rather cash-in on short-term even if it tarnishes their brand in the long-term. Or, at least, there is a LONG history of examples that we can point to for justification of this opinion.
In the end, I think where someone will land on this will ultimately change on a person by person basis. Going forward, I think I want to be more conscientious of what games I support in Early Access. Conversely, I totally see your point, and wouldn’t be at all surprised, nor offended to see you supporting something like a No Man’s Sky, or Cities 2 EA. That’s kind of what makes this question interesting to ask, and discuss in the first place, which is why I wrote about it.
Also – as someone who enjoyed Fatshark’s previous games, there was no hope for Darktide. Both Vermintide games are held together with duct tape and sit on a shaky foundation of hopes and dreams hahaha.
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Agree, it’s a great topic for discussion. I don’t know if I have enough additional to say for an entire post, but I think one area to investigate might be the origins of the Early Access phenomena.
I can’t remember which actually came first, but Minecraft and Mount & Blade 1 are the two earliest examples I know of essentially following this model (albeit not by the now somewhat formalised Early Access nomenclature).
Either way, I think it *started* with indies to help with cash flow likely being the primary driver in many cases, but also likely an element of ‘just doing things differently’ and getting that feedback through development earlier.
Conversely, there is what you already mentioned: AAA just didn’t ‘need’ (nor want) to operate this way. They could fund their own development, run focus sessions, and put the game out when ‘done’. (That definition of done certainly becoming looser though over the past 5-10 years.)
Point of highlighting this being that I don’t see anything in that, that would (or should) make EA exclusively the domain of indies. Triple-A gon’ Triple-A regardless. I don’t believe any material market-shift is going to happen whether they decide to jump in on the EA tag thing or not.
Which then, assuming that is accepted, may as well just be honest with us. Want an extended beta period using your buying customers? Well, OK then- but call it what it is. I understand the reluctance to do so, but I think there are benefits, too. e.g., being able to take multiple bites of the cherry re: market attention with big updates and/or eventual 1.0 release.
There are a great many games (all the ones I mentioned in the previous post, for example) where I still would’ve bought them anyway under the EA title, but just been a lot less pissed off about their ‘release’ state.
Aaaand as I look at this comment; yeah, maybe could’ve done a post. But one final note to end on — if we ignore all that (or still disagree), and we say, ‘You know what? EA *should* only be for Indies’, I’m not sure that solves the ‘problem’.
Supergiant Games is *not* in the same ‘Indie’ position as a fresh studio yet to get their first game out the door. Should Hades II be ‘allowed’ to EA then?
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Re:Supergiant – uh…probably? They’re still a 25 person studio, and even assuming Hades (the first) made an eye-watering 500m USD in lifetime revenue (which it probably didn’t because that’s an absurd amount of money for even AAA games to make) then they’re still not in the same position as something like Microsoft which made…
*quick Google search*
76.4 billion USD last quarter.
Sure, Supergiant Games had a wildly successful runaway hit in Hades, but AAA devs are working with several magnitudes more capital. Like…if you want a more strictly game focused example, Ubisoft made 300m USD off just their backcatalog sales in Q1 ’25. It’s a complete apples to oranges comparison to think that any indie studio could afford to compete on the same level as AAA regardless of their level of success without additional external funding, and years to develop a larger company.
So…yes I do think Supergiant are still indie even if they’re more successful than other indies, and should be able to leverage EA.
Again, I don’t think a single runaway success even remotely bridges the gap between your typical indie and AAA dev shop, and insinuating that it does, or that it should preclude you from leveraging EA (when my original question was about if AAA should be using EA) feels a bit like moving the goalposts.
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I’ll be honest and say I’m unclear what problem is looking to be solved by exclusion of AAA from the Early Access nomenclature.
So that stated, if it wasn’t clear already, my starting position is that there is no reason to exclude AAA.
My final point in the last comment was putting on the lenses of, ‘Well, if we’re going to do it… where does the line get drawn?’
Yes, your post puts the ‘goalpost’ at AAA, but why? You already called out Larian as an example for possible exception, even though they’re by all technical definitions still Indie (plus the licensing was a cost to them, not a funding arrangement).
The point I was trying to make is less that Supergiant, Larian, or others with super successful games aren’t indie, but that even so, they’re not playing the same game as an indie without that degree of success. There are differences in order of magnitude between these players and the starter/struggling/no-breakthrough-hit end of that spectrum as well.
So if the argument centres on whether or not AAA ‘needs’ Early Access to fund themselves, then there are plenty indies that ‘should’ be excluded as well.
Of course, that sub-argument all assumes you believe there is only the one reason for utilising Early Access in the first place; which I don’t think either of us do.
So all said and done; I guess where I land is that I’m not particularly worried about who is using Early Access, only how. Are they acting in good faith? Not dropping abandonware? Using the EA window to capture useful feedback? etc etc.
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I don’t know that there was a problem per se. The original question was around whether or not one of the richest companies in the world should be using Early Access, and examining why or why not.
And I think the answer to that is largely going to change on a person by person basis, which is why I said in my original reply that I could see your point (especially for the examples given – sans maybe Darktide because every Fatshark game is a technical disaster regardless of development time).
I guess I still sit in a camp where I view the gap between something like MS, or Embracer, or Ubisoft (etc.) and Supergiant, or Klei (etc.) as being far larger than the latter (“indies”) and a studio that has nothing. Largely because (from a maths perspective) it is. The gap between 0 and 100 million is a lot smaller than the gap between 100 million and a billion. Which…like I’m not unaware that’s a somewhat narrow perspective to have on the matter, but the financials are something that we don’t have to assume (for publicly traded companies) in an industry that usually doesn’t like to publicly acknowledge much of anything. Ergo, it’s an easier way to draw some kind of line in the sand provided you wanted to do so (which…yeah I do).
Regardless, I’d be inclined to agree with you on the particulars of the broad strokes. And, to their credit, Obsidian & Eidos do appear to be acting in good faith with Grounded 2 specifically so there is that at the end of the day.
I’m just going to assume (hopefully correctly?) that you’ve elaborated on your stance to a much greater degree in the article you wrote, and tagged me in so that’ll be my next stop.
Also, non sequitur that doesn’t have any bearing on what you said: I wouldn’t consider Larian independent whatsoever. They like to claim as much while being 3/10s owned by Tencent, which is something I completely forgot about while writing my article. But like…that doesn’t matter for the point(s) you were trying to make.
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First: I am impressed with how far nested your theme lets comments go. xD
Second: 100% this is one of those issues for a room of a whole raft of personal opinions based on what specifically you value more.
I guess the last thing I would address in your comment here though (in the interests of ACTUALLY keeping things short this time) is that the multipliers involved in the gulfs of course depend on what you define — but in terms of the raw size of the gap involved; absolutely AAA, or Indie-AAA+ (CD Projekt, Larian, etc) or whatever else is going to have just… a giganticly mindboggling large gap between them and a Supergiant or Team Cherry.
But I’m not as convinced that it tracks to the same level on a significance scale. To someone barely pulling in $30k off their game and potentially gone into debt to even get it out, it might only be a 10x jump to $300k — but the significance of it and what it allows them to then do is so huge.
Or on a studio scale, the studio perhaps pulling in $500k annually but with overheads having to run a lot of contract work to keep the lights on, vs. one with a breakout success title (even if only a minor one, cracking into the $2m region, or a 4x multi) who can then get their creative freedom back.
I get you though on the resources and power the big guys can pull in, but that’s where I land back at, ‘Sure… But they’re already swimming in the same pool as it is.’
(Mission: Short comment, failed. D’oh.)
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Fairs fair across the board. I think we’ve done this to death at this point, and you even got a Blaugust article out of it hahaha.
Also re:theme – thanks I guess? It’s just 1 of wordpress’ freebies so like…I aint got any control over that, but I’ll take the compliment regardless.
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