Valve Adds Early Access For Some Games In Steam
When it comes to most games, what ends up being released is more or less 100% complete, minus any extra DLC that ends up getting released later on. However, there has been a growing trend lately in game development, mostly from indie developers, where the game ends up being “released” in a very rough state at first for purchase, and over time the developer will keep tweaking and refining the game. Minecraft is perhaps the most famous game that used this development technique, and despite the game being at a level that many folks would probably consider to be functionally complete Mojang is still hard at work at adding new stuff for the game.
The only problem with those kinds of games is that they tend to fly under the radar for a lot of gamers, and sometimes suffer from a lack of exposure due to not being “complete” for the likes of Steam. That’s all changing, however, as Valve has now added a hub for Early Access games in Steam. Through Steam you can now purchase these under-development games, and instead of having to wait for it to be “finished” you’ll instead be able to play the games as-is, and give feedback, discuss the game, and basically act as a beta test of sorts for these games.
To start with Valve has placed 12 of these Early Access games in Steam. These games are: Arma 3 Alpha, Kerbal Space Program, Kenshi, StarForge, Prison Architect, Kinetic Void, Gnomoria, Under the Ocean, Patterns, Gear Up: Premium, Drunken Robot Pornography, and 1… 2… 3… KICK IT! What’s more, some of these games (Kerbal Space Program, Prison Architect, and Patterns) are SteamPlay games, meaning that they’ll work on other operating systems besides Windows!
