So, a game called Shadowrun Chronicles was released on Steam today...

[kane_magus]

...and while perusing the Steam forums for the game, just to see what was what[1], I happened along this little gem of a thread (OP dated March 17, 2015, i.e. a little over a month before the game's release today). If you can ignore the OP's atrocious and repeated misspelling of the word "beta" and make it down to the developer's comments (the

Comments

[owsf2000]

While I agree Minecraft does it, and in fact I'll go one further and say they probably STARTED it. But I will say there's still a difference between Mojang's tactics and how the entire industry mutated it

[kane_magus]

Yeah, it's the same as it was with a lot of other things to come out of the video game industry in the past decade or so. This early access concept didn't necessarily start as a terrible idea, and I agree that the way Minecraft did it was somewhat more palatable than how it's done now (which is essentially to charge near or at full price for the game no matter what stage of development it's at). It still isn't inherently a terrible idea, if it were done right. It's just that it has become yet another thing that a bunch more johnny-come-lately devs and publishers have mindlessly jumped on the bandwagon with, because money, and as such are implementing in a much more egregiously terrible, blatantly moneygrubbing way than how it was done before

[owsf2000]

The funny thing is that a few years further back, before the industry finally added the last straw for you, we use to talk about all the stuff going on in the industry on IRC only it was me that was doing most of the bitching