Generally speaking, Early Access rewards developers who have not yet learned how to balance the disparate parts of making a game. I do not mean only the simple technical capabilities of implementing features, but also the competence to judge when it is appropriate to add/remove features, what is reasonable for one’s development team to produce, what sort of promises can justly be made, et cetera.

This may sound curmudgeonly, but I think the industry is better off if developers who cannot sort out these basics of development are consequently denied the funds to bring their ideas–however noble or beautiful–to fruition. For, the simple reality is that even with the funds, lacking the competence necessary, they will be unable to produce on their promises.

Developers that can balance the expectations of their userbase, the promises they can fulfil, the features they want to implement, the correction of bugs, and so on–they will do well enough *without* Early Access. And, in fact, they would be better off if Early Access didn’t exist at all–not only for them, but for everybody–since Early Access crowds the market, conflating competent developers with the vast hordes of the incompetent.

One of the important skills that a successful developer must accomplish is persuading people, and the media, that their game deserves a look-in. Not every game in development does. In fact, most do not. Most developers are incompetent. This isn’t me being mean, it is a simple fact. Everyone wants to be a game developer. Few have the skills to pull it off.

Unfortunately, Early Access puts those developers on a level with those who haven’t got those skills. And to make matters worse, journalists become complicit. Instead of exercising criticality to call attention to what is worth presenting to their readership, journalists are becoming nothing more than PR mouthpieces, promoting everything that comes across the desk, regardless of quality. This upsets the balance entirely: deprived of critical journalists whose job it is to sift through the rubble, and presented with the levelling field of Greenlight and Early Access, consumers end up supporting games which are no-hopers, whilst the few excellent titles are deprived of much of the attention and funding they not only need, but deserve.

Simply put, competent developers will have the skills necessary to make it possible for them to develop a game without Early Access. So, why support developers that don’t have those skills? This is a business, not a fun fair. It is not the job of consumers to subsidise incompetent developers on the basis that it’s ‘nice’ so to do.

I agree that indie devs are often waaaaay too ambitious (I’m looking at you, Hello Games), and I think that their over ambitiousness is one of the biggest problems with indie devs. Tim Schafer is probably the best example of this, but many indie devs constantly promise us the world when the reality is that the most they can offer us is a small suburb.