Back in February, I wrote about Shadows of Doubt, a very cool immersive sim detective game that was in early access. The game released its 1.0 version last week, alongside coming to Xbox and PlayStation. But some players are torn on whether it’s “really” in 1.0 now, and grappling with their expectations against the released game.
Shadows of Doubt came to early access in April 2023. The latest version isn’t a massive influx of new content; 1.0 launched with a few new case types and an umbrella to keep your character from getting wet (a real problem in the game!). In the release blog, developer Cole Jefferies writes
We’ve finished making the content we wanted to include in the final game… It’s such a massive project for any team, let alone a small one, so we’ll continue working hard behind the scenes to sort out any issues we didn’t manage to solve before launch… In the future, you can still expect small bits of content to arrive in patches, as we just love adding details.
On Steam, reviews are currently “mixed.” Many of the recent reviews express disappointment with the 1.0 release, citing a lack of new content and the presence of bugs that they wouldn’t expect in a finished game. Some players feel burned by the build-up to a full release that doesn’t meet their expectations, or feel like the game didn’t improve through early access in the way they’d expect. In true Steam review fashion, some players speculate that the game was pushed out of early access as a cash grab for console players’ money, or that the developer is abandoning the game. To sum up the opinions, as one player on reddit said, “The only change between 1.0 and early access is them saying it’s 1.0.”
Of course, plenty of other players are happy with the 1.0 release; they liked the game in early access and they like it now. Personally, I’d fall into this camp. I’ve only put a little time into the official release, and while I’ve encountered some performance issues, like micro-stutters, I’d hoped would be solved, plenty of other games have launched with such issues, and I feel confident, or at least hopeful, they’ll be worked out. I was a little surprised that there wasn’t a ton of new content for the 1.0 release, but I’ve far from burned myself out on the game; when combined with its procedural generation, there’s plenty of Shadows of Doubt left for me to play. For me, the main draw of the 1.0 release is that it means people I know who avoid early access might take a chance on the game, giving me more people to talk about it with.
I don’t want to litigate the drama happening around a small indie game; instead, I’m curious what Shadows of Doubt’s release response says about the expectations early access and official releases set players up for. What does it really mean for a game to leave early access? Should a game be massively different in its 1.0 release?
There’s no clear example. Fortnite was early access until 2020, but I wouldn’t say the popular battle royale felt in-development; its gameplay changes and new content feel basically identical in the “official” release. DayZ was a sensation in early access in a way that made the label feel a bit meaningless and its official release anticlimactic. Star Citizen sits in some nebulous space between early access and, let’s face it, fake. A friend of mine has recently gotten into Project Zomboid, a game that’s been in early access so long I can’t believe it still exists. Dwarf Fortress was in early access so long that it wasn’t actually really early access at all, because Steam early access didn’t exist back then. Valve seems to be circumventing early access altogether with whatever the hell Deadlock is doing.
Some games, like how Nathan feels about Hades 2, seem to benefit from early access, with developers leaning into the label in the narrative and development of the game itself. Other games can struggle with how the process invites player participation in development; as Raphael van Lierop, the director of The Long Dark, told me in 2019, “We have this grateful feeling towards our community, but also strangely cautious feeling towards our community… We want you [players] to participate. But you’re not in the driver’s seat and you’re never going to be in the driver’s seat.”
The Long Dark, which started in early access in 2014, pegged its official launch to a much-hyped story mode that some players found so disappointing that studio Hinterland reworked the whole thing. It’s one example of one of the potential pitfalls of big new content for a 1.0 release: the risk that the game changes too much for dedicated early access players, or doesn’t meet the expectations they’ve set in their heads after years of feeling involved.
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad for early access players to feel attachment or even a bit of ownership over a game; developers benefit from their feedback, and also from the money early access brings in. But I’m not sure what an official release means to the early access player who’s spent dozens or hundreds of hours in a game. Surely they stuck with it for more than just the idea of what it could be on full release. Should a full release be a kind of reward for their time, money, and feedback? Or is a full release more of an invitation to new players, an offering that meets whatever standards a developer sets for feeling it’s ready for them without the caveats of early access?
If you play early access, you know the pitfalls of burning yourself out on a game and missing out on any 1.0 content because you played it too much before it released. But you might also have higher expectations than a new player; you want new content because you’ve played so much of it, where a new player hasn’t played it at all. I think both cohorts might hold a game with an early access period to a higher standard than games that just release; it’s reasonable to assume a game’s content and technical performance will benefit from the extra development time. A game that feels rickety or unfinished after an early access phase is certainly extra disappointing to both new and returning players. But a game officially releasing also doesn’t mean it’s done; No Man’s Sky is a perfect example of a game whose official launch period sort of feels like early access now, given how much it’s changed since.
Leaving early access heralds a shift in how a developer works on a game; it signals that the development has changed, even if it hasn’t fully ended. For early access players used to updates and new content, this can be disappointing, especially if they’ve been deeply involved in the early access process. But it might also be relieving, signalling the end of saves lost due to updates or strategies and playstyles changing as systems are reworked. Maybe an official launch isn’t a renovation as much as a foundation, a settling in to what a game is. Despite what the rise of live-service games suggests, I don’t think a developer should have to work on one game forever, nor do I think a player should get a lifetime of content out of one game. In one of life’s hardest lessons, it’s okay for a game to be “done” and for everyone to move on, even if a game still has room to grow.
Early access has come a long way since Steam launched the program in 2013. I’ve played games that felt basically finished out of the gate, as well as games that felt way too bare bones to have been worth spending money on. My Steam library is full of games whose titles or entire concepts changed in early access, and even ones that were basically abandoned and never changed at all after I bought them. Early access has its pros and cons, but at the end of the day, developers–for a variety of reasons–decide when their game is ready for 1.0.
