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[Cambios]

My studio recently launched our mmo, Stash, on Steam Early Access. We will likely be in EA for a few months.

We haven't really done much to push that launch or publicize it. I've heard from various sources things like "you only get one launch" and "if they cover your EA launch, they don't want to cover your full launch" but I don't know to what degree that is true.

I think we have a relatively unique concept (Stash has turn based combat and a tabletop art style/aesthetic with a huge focus on community and house building) that I believe makes for interesting coverage. But of course, I'm super biased.

What are some of your experiences with balancing this type of decision, and how hard to push/promote EA versus holding off for the full launch?

Thanks,

[RaconteurNick]

My studio recently launched our mmo, Stash, on Steam Early Access. We will likely be in EA for a few months.

We haven't really done much to push that launch or publicize it. I've heard from various sources things like "you only get one launch" and "if they cover your EA launch, they don't want to cover your full launch" but I don't know to what degree that is true.

I think we have a relatively unique concept (Stash has turn based combat and a tabletop art style/aesthetic with a huge focus on community and house building) that I believe makes for interesting coverage. But of course, I'm super biased.

What are some of your experiences with balancing this type of decision, and how hard to push/promote EA versus holding off for the full launch?

Thanks,

"You only get one launch" is simply not true. Typically this refers to Steam's initial free impressions when you launch -- but if you go Early Access it saves the big 1m impressions for the full launch.

Further, if your game is worth talking about, press will cover it again if they covered it the first time.

"You only get one launch" is just people trying to deride Early Access -- what I think they really want to mean is you should put more focus on the big launch at the end when it's finished, rather than right now. Hunker down and make sure it's really awesome for the big launch, and that's when I would focus more attention on press, etc. So if you don't get much coverage now, you can pitch it to them by talking about how much you learned and took feedback during EA, etc. Good luck.

[Madras]

We've been making a decision about Early Access for months and we've finally decided to do it, here's some arguments in favor of EA we've thought about:
1) Obvious stuff like getting feedback on the game before it's done, bug reports, early income etc.
2) You will have some user reviews already for the day you release the game. This is a double edged sword - if your game is good it will boost your full release sales because people won't be waiting for others to try the game. But if you get a mixed rating it might ruin your full release.
3) Above applies to media attention - if the game gets "overwhelmingly positive" rating it might be easier to get coverage for the full release, and the opposite if your rating isn't so good.
4) Steam is just one platform, and if you're going multiplatform none of Early Access negatives apply to your other platforms' releases and some positives do (feedback, bug reports, media attention).

My conclusion is that you should do Early Access if you're really confident in quality of your game - it's really polished and fun and you just plan to add more content. Otherwise it might hurt you really bad. And if you decide to do it, you should make the most of it and promote it as hard as your final release. The only case when someone covers it in EA and they won't do it again for full release is when the game is bad and in that case you shouldn't be doing Early Access in the first place.