Early Access and Indy: Here We Nearly Are Again

Outrage! Calls of unfairness and exploitation! Broken features without a day one patch! This is Indiana Jones weekend for the privileged few and conversation has once more tipped towards early access.

On the face of it, it’s a pretty obvious ploy. If you want to enjoy the latest game over the weekend, you have to pay a premium for it. If you want to be part of the initial conversation instead of nursing your FOMO from a distance, you have to pay a premium. There’s little to defend it, but try seriously getting red in the face because you have to wait three days for something. It’s scummy, it’s capitalistic and it’s not that big a deal.

I recently stumbled into early access with Sonic X Shadow Generations, because the upgrade fee was minimal and came with the Keanu DLC. It was a bonus, not a reason for purchase, and the achievements didn’t work. I had to replay a chunk of the game to earn what I’d already done.

Indiana Jones is reportedly having a few more issues. DLSS doesn’t work especially well. There are glitches including one where some animations run at a different framerate to the rest of the game under certain conditions. The Steam Deck has an amusing glitch where the only texture that loads in on Indy’s face is his beard. It’s a useful but not especially convincing trick for avoiding paying Harrison Ford a likeness fee.

These things won’t necessarily be fixed in the day one patch, but hopefully some would be. Players who don’t pay will inevitably have the better experience.

We have to accept that this is here to stay, and that it’s not that big a deal. We shouldn’t accept the poor planning that goes alongside it.

Early Access – Smoothing Out

If this is a thing, let’s standardise it. Let’s not have Sunday night release dates, because that’s just obviously treating the actual release as an afterthought. Let’s not have day one patches on what is technically day three. Fix it so that the bugs around things like achievements – something reviewers have been putting up with since achievement were a thing – aren’t an issue. If you want to sell someone early access to your title, don’t make them extremely late beta players and charge them a premium. Especially since surprise issues will never be fixed by the time everybody gets to it.

Indiana Jones isn’t the first and it won’t be the last. Some of the valid points are being lost in the general outrage towards the practise itself. There will always be grumbling from people who (rightfully) don’t want to pay a premium for a few days extra play. But in the annals of video game companies trying to squeeze out a few extra bucks, this is one of the least egregious. Remember when you couldn’t play online in second hand games without paying a digital fee?

I don’t like it. I don’t have to like it, and won’t ever specifically pay for it. But the very least publishers could do, if they want to offer this service, is to make sure it works. That is by no means too much to ask.