Been hit by hit n run devs a few times now, Lords of the Black Sun, and sword of the stars bot hit me quite hard for example, and there have been many more besides. I now steer clear of EA, I still have some hope for Farthest Frontier, but that game was already in 'almost' release ready state when i jumped in, same with Space Haven, both are looking great so far and i'd argue are ready for release. These are companies using the Early Access scheme properly, and not as an early moneymaker with little or no plans to complete. Some i've been watching have been on EA for like 5+ years!
All i can say is Caveat Emptor!

Originally posted by Cypher:

Been hit by hit n run devs a few times now, Lords of the Black Sun, and sword of the stars bot hit me quite hard for example, and there have been many more besides. I now steer clear of EA, I still have some hope for Farthest Frontier, but that game was already in 'almost' release ready state when i jumped in, same with Space Haven, both are looking great so far and i'd argue are ready for release. These are companies using the Early Access scheme properly, and not as an early moneymaker with little or no plans to complete. Some i've been watching have been on EA for like 5+ years!
All i can say is Caveat Emptor!

OHH WELL RIP

I extremely rarely buy games in EA due to the embarrassing collection titled 'Buyer's Regret' in my library.

It's always the same story:

- Devs brainstorm whatever might be 'hot' right now and push a narrative as to how the game will be 'unlike anything you've ever seen'.
- Devs launch an early alpha in EA to demonstrate they aren't scamming
- Money piles up as hundreds of thousands of people spend 29$ or whatever for 'what could be'.
- Devs do a rug pull, take the money, launch the title so they don't get sued and go sip pina coladas on your dime
- Devs change their company name
- Rinse wash repeat until the whole planet becomes cynical.

It's sad. We know EA can work but only when the devs have HUGE cash reserves and ZERO incentive to quadruple the C-suite salary. BG3 is a good example of EA done right. There was a risk, they knew it, took it and so did the buyers - but they pulled through and likely will be game of the year 2023.

On the other hand you have shovelware like this scamming you slowly out of your money - one sale at a time.

It's particularly frustrating because the people who bought the game genuinely wanted to help 'good devs' push out 'a fantastic concept'. Except it always ends up the same way.

PS: Yes I know PA was in EA, i was in the alpha 1. Yes they did their work but let's not fool ourselves the game was good on release until they sold the license for gigabucks.

Greed ruins everything blah blah blah

I thought Introversion did it right with PA. (and Paradox f'd it all up switching to their money-grabbing dlc model) Still PA was actually done and properly released when they sold to Paradox.

Another company that does EA right is Klei. ONI and DS have been out of EA for years and still get regular updates with new features, which I find impressive.

Sadly, I agree that IoT wasn't ready. They did a rug pull.

I absolutely don't do EA... except when they catch me in a particular mood, you know, when you have an itch for a certain game or genre (after playing the Ascent - great game btw, I wanted more cyberpunk/Space/alien planets/ bladerunner esque visuals - you know the drill.) And nothing in your library or that you're aware of coming out soon is doing it for you, so you go an a little browse...

I on the other hand almost exclusively play EA's, and as long as I get an hour of play per dollar payed, I call it a win. I also never expect super niche EA's to ever do well. I'm just glad I got to play a game that wasn't FPS #9543

No offence, i wish i was as easily pleased. I approached the game in the spirit of EA as proscribed, that is a game that is almost feature complete and requiring some polish, a Beta basically, according to the steam description. It's not supposed to be a way to finance development which i think a lot of companies use it as.

And when EA sales dry up as people wait for the finished product, they run out of money and this is the result.

Happens most of the time unfortunately and with Steams nonexistant quality control, i fear it will only increase, to the overall detriment of gaming, given their massive share of the market.

I got 60 good hours out of it so am not too disappointed, to be honest. There was a potentially fantastic city builder here but they just didn't seem to understand what to do with it.

That and I think it just didn't make enough money to justify continuing.

Originally posted by Baigent_Orange:

I got 60 good hours out of it so am not too disappointed, to be honest. There was a potentially fantastic city builder here but they just didn't seem to understand what to do with it.

That and I think it just didn't make enough money to justify continuing.

How can it not make enough money when it hadn't even released? Don't get me wrong, I actually agree, these devs just like many others use Early Access to fund the game. Anyone who does this is destined to fail as people (pc players especially) aren't as easy to fool with shiny's as console players (usually console players are younger and lets face it, stupid - not all mind, just generally).
when EA sales dry up as people wait for the finished product to release, they realise they have half a game and no more income, so development stalls and then finally ends when they can't afford to pay their bills.
The worst thing is that Valve lets them get away with it, repeatedly! Despite it being against their terms.
It's what happened here, it's happening to Between The Stars (was supposed to release a year ago!), Lords of the Black Sun and SO MANY OTHERS!
The best we can do is ignore ALL early access games until they're released or they prove they have enough to finish development. Let it go the way of Steam Greenlight (remember that!?) and stop the scammers making off wit hour hard earned cash!

I already expected them to discontinue support relatively soon once i noticed the updates were targetting stuff barely anyone cared about.
People wanted more complex city building, better interior, more population and resource systems (leisure, food etc) but they implemented stuff like wind direction or randomization no one cared about.
To me, it was clear the game wasnt successful enough to warrant further development and at least a year before their 1.0 announcement i already suited myself to a rush to 1.0, calling it a day and leaving it as a portfolio title.
And i was right.
There were several indicators hinting at it, like less coverage of the game and thus less interest, but thats all their own fault, because who likes to cover a game that doesnt add interesting updates?

The game was successful, it wasnt making enough money and the reason is entirely on them and their bad project management and game design. Both absolutely failed, possibly they just didnt understand the genre.
And thats nothing untypical. A lot of developers attempting to step into city builders or strategy games fall flat on their face, because they think its as easy as all the puzzle platformers, shooters or whatever they created before.
However, getting a strategy game right is far harder and its even harder to find a good mix of mechanics to make it fun and engaging.

The sad part is, Industries of Titan had the chance to become a great game with a great gameplay loop.
But instead of fleshing out the gameplay loop, they just added stuff to add replayability.
Problem is, no one wants to replay a boring and shallow game.
A strategy game creates replayability through its systems and complexity.
Not because you have a randomized research grid or a randomized campaign or randomized goals.
Those things are all fine and great and i like them in my games, but only if the actual game is good and fun.


If you want to know how this could have been going, look at Against the Storm.
A game that started relatively "simple" yet engaging and fun (just like Industries of Titan) but received substantial and fun updates that added meaningful content adding complexity, choice and substance.
Later replayability, once the core gameplay was good enough, while also adding content to the core game loop (for example they had in their first version dangerous tasks you needed to solve in your city and they added not only more of them, but also more complex ones and interesting ones).
That game started solid but simple and small on Epic, developed great and then went on steam, turning out to become one of the best received games in recent time and a prime example of a fun city builder.



Industries of Titan could have done the same. Actually the games arent too different to each other at their core.
But i guess they had too limited Project funding and thus had to rush to get some milestones done, just the wrong ones.

I am extremely disappointed by this game as I expected a bit more. It's not engaging enough for me to put any more time into it to try and salvage my feelings towards it.