Denis Dyack, known for his work on games including Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, says big game developers are "abusing early access" by using it as a marketing tool for highly polished games that are ready for full release anyway. That, Dyack believes, has shifted expectations for early access releases overall, and made life more difficult for indie developers who rely on the process to actually get their games finished and launched.

"They can put up a polished product and rake in cash," Dyack told GamesIndustry. "It's a marketing beat for them. So, that leaves players often expecting a near-perfect game that, in our opinion, defeats the purpose of early access, which is a collaborative development process based on player feedback.

"AAA publishers are abusing early access, skewing player expectations in such a way that it heavily disadvantages smaller independent developers."

Dyack said games like Subnautica 2 and Path of Exile are "drastically changing the landscape and players' expectations," which in turn has led to "significant barriers to entry" for less polished games like Dyack's current project, Deadhaus Sonata, which is now in early access on Steam.

Ethan McKinnon, who joined Deadhaus Sonata developer Apocalypse Studios as creative director after the game's rough early access launch earlier this year, added that "players naturally compare everything in the same marketplace, so smaller teams are being held to a much higher standard than they were in the past."

Interestingly, Subnautica 2 creative director Anthony Gallegos seemed to agree with at least part of Dyack's proposition, saying in the same report that early access is "not a few edge-case games participating anymore."

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