The Steam Early Access program is a handy way for developers to get their latest projects out into hands of the adoring public, or disgruntled, depending on the quality of the game.
Still, not everyone understands the Early Access program and there are more than a few instances where players have felt somewhat aggrieved by their early purchase.
DayZ’s Brian Hicks recently spoke to Eurogamer about the problems that present themselves with the Early Access program, namely that everyone uses the program in a different manner.
“I feel that there’s no structure to Early Access and every developer uses it in a different way and enters at a different phase in their development. And the consumers, you can’t blame them for not understanding, because in order to make heads or tails out of the fact that everyone’s doing this different, you need to understand the software development cycle completely. And gamers play f***ing video games, man – they’re not looking to understand the SDL or how software is created, and they shouldn’t have to, honestly.”
The Early Access program is something of a battlefield and as a consumer you’re taking a great risk when you pay upfront for a game that isn’t finished. It may never finish and you’ll be left out-of-pocket with a game that barely resembles the final vision for the product. It’s all part of the fun though, what’s life without a bit of risk?
The console version of DayZ is also greatly anticipated by fans of the open-world survival genre. However, it’s doesn’t look good: there’s only a couple of people working on the console version whilst a team of around 40 people are working on the PC version. Ouch.
However, the team aims to have a prototype ready for later this year, so maybe we’ll see something at E3?
The team behind DayZ are targeting a 2016 release date with a console release to follow once the PC version is complete, so expect DayZ to appear on consoles around 2055.
Still playing DayZ? Or have you switched over to Sony’s H1Z1? Still looking forward to DayZ releasing on consoles? Or is PC the true home? Let us know down in the comments section below.