Whatever expectations and plans you have before your game is live, Early Access will surprise you and change your priorities. In the end, when your players know that you listen and respond, you will receive much more valuable feedback from them. Always keep in mind that they want the same thing as you вЂ“ a better game. So, hereвЂ™s my advice: talk to your players, listen to them, act on their feedback, explain your decisions with logical arguments and be the engaged, communicative developer they deserve.

Never promise anything that is not yet set in stone.This was all very new to us and weвЂ™ve certainly made our share of mistakes, but in general we adhered to two simple rules that helped us avoid PR nightmare:

The programmers also got in touch directly with any user that experienced some kind of issue that we canвЂ™t replicate. We encouraged the whole design team to partake in forum discussions, comment on our reviews and generally talk with the players as much as possible, even in-game. This is particularly true for the Early Access community that consists of gamers who want to talk with the developers and help them shape the final form of their game. Communicating with the playersДЄs with any relationship, communication is crucial and perceived problems will get worse if you stay silent. Our first few weeks after release were very strong both in terms of sales and press coverage and I think that the community contributed to this as several reviews commented that the Early Access players present the game very favorably in their reviews. I canвЂ™t speak for other titles, but this was certainly not true for Victor Vran. There is one myth IвЂ™ve heard repeated several times вЂ“ that you canвЂ™t have a proper game release after Early Access and that players, youtubers and journalists tend to ignore titles that were previously released to the public. By that time we had thriving Steam forums with many players that knew the ins and outs of Victor Vran and were more than happy to welcome newcomers and вЂњvery positiveвЂќ user reviews with 93% user approval creating a very different impression to people that discovered our game for the first time. Thankfully, Early Access gave us the time to remedy the situation and things were very different on our actual release day five months later. Is this game like Van Helsing?вЂќ and not one thread that explains what the game actually is. If youвЂ™ve opened our Steam forums on the first day, you wouldвЂ™ve found four threads titled like вЂњConfused. This was, of course, our fault вЂ“ we shouldвЂ™ve started with the marketing earlier. Nobody out there knew about our game when we first released in Steam Early Access. Can you have a proper release after Early Access?

Five months may not sound like a lot of time for a project that was developed for several years, but it was in those few months that the project grew more than in any other period throughout its development. Victor Vran was in Early Access from February 2015 till July 2015.

Still, our experience with Steam Early Access as developers has been nothing but positive and I am certain that it helped us make a better game. Gamers are certainly justified to criticize incomplete or abandoned titles and developers who donвЂ™t deliver what they promised. Steam Early Access gets a lot of bad rap at times.

Steam project haven