Towards the democratization of early access for recognized studios?
For Thomas Mahler, the CEO of Moon Studios, the practice of early access has a lot of advantages for the studio. While he is aware that this is not always popular, he describes this process as essential for certain games, regardless of the studio behind it:
“ We're not even a week into Early Access and it's already pretty clear that choosing this option is one of the best decisions we could have made. I see some people are still upset about why games like Wicked, Hades 2, Larian's new game, etc. are launching in Early Access even though the studio “should have the funds to complete the game and release it at that time.” But this amounts to looking at a complex problem from far too simple an angle. I think as games become more and more complex and sophisticated, we'll see some form of early access happening more and more often. »
He then explains that No Rest for the Wicked could not have been released directly in version 1.0 while benefiting from the care that will be given to the game via community feedback:
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“ From our own experience, we simply couldn't have released Wicked in 1.0 without being able to see all the data we currently see and all the user feedback. And I'm talking about actual users, not a targeted test group. Even if we had 2-3 times as many people it would have been simply impossible, the game is simply far too complex to reasonably expect that […] I hear “You can just do it through updates and DLC!” » No, often you can't. Launching a game is always incredibly difficult and stressful and most of the time it involves making some pretty drastic compromises, especially if your game is trying to accomplish something new. And if you don't know that it's okay to introduce certain features and things after the fact, you'll end up removing them before the game hits the market. »
Mahler even goes so far as to say that the practice should become more popular among the major studios, who would have everything to gain from it. He cites for example the case of From Software and the first Dark Souls :
“ And even historically, I think some games would have benefited from early access before it even existed. Imagine a Dark Souls launching in Early Access – instead of rushing to ship a boxed product in a somewhat unfinished state, they probably could have looked at the second half of that game while completely polishing the less clean areas like Izalith the Lost , etc. »
Whether we agree with our own experience or not, we can in any case conclude that the studio is relieved to have chosen early access for No Rest for the Wicked, which now only needs to be refined. Our first impressions of the game will arrive shortly.
We're not even a week into Early Access and it's already pretty clear that going with EA is one of the best decisions we could've made 👍❤️
I see some people are still irked about why games like Wicked, Hades 2, Larian's new game, etc. launch into Early Access even if the studio…
— thomasmahler (@thomasmahler) April 24, 2024
No Rest for the Wicked is available on PC via Steam. It will also be released later on PlayStation 5 as well as Xbox Series.
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