I strongly dislike Kickstarter.
I strongly dislike Kickstarter.
I really enjoy Kickstarter. It allows indie developers to secure funding for games that might otherwise remain unseen. However, I strongly dislike Kickstarter—and by extension, early access on Steam—since MMO creators are exploiting it to turn alpha testing into a revenue stream. This should be a serious professional activity, not a casual fundraising tool. Additionally, major publishers are leveraging the platform to build financial buffers for titles they were already planning to support. For instance, Archeage, which didn’t receive funding on Kickstarter, has already completed extensive testing in Korea. It’s been two years since that work began! Trion is delaying their efforts so they can extract value from this early access, using vague justifications like “we’re handpicking our launch content.” I’ve led an MMORPG guild for eight years and have always worked with a dedicated, professional alpha testing team. They actively coordinated, communicated, and backed the developers. It hasn’t been more than four years since we organized raids in Rift with real developers via Teamspeak. We also recall similar experiences with Age of Conan, The Secret World, Warhammer Online, and more. Around this time, I should be testing World of Darkness, which could have been a unique chance. But for other reasons, it won’t happen. 70% of my fondest gaming memories stem from MMORPG alphas—close-knit communities united by shared enthusiasm. Now that Kickstarter is involved, the concept of “alpha” feels outdated and disappointing. It’s sad.
I understand the concerns about recent changes in how alphas are funded, like what happened with DayZ.
Well, there's a solution for this... stop throwing them your money like there's no tomorrow. Then the problem will fix itself. Same goes for everything else: don't like battlelog for bf4 and the fact that it's full of bugs and has 60$ of day one dlc? Don't buy it. Don't like the fact that watch dogs was purposefully nerfed for pc an performed like absolute crap? Don't buy it. Had enough of the "gta v not coming to pc for more than a year because we want to milk older hardware first" bs? Don't. Buy. It. (not directed at op but more generally to the gaming community) Quake 2 still rules