Left 4 Dead's writer Chet Faliszek has explained why he'll never launch a game in early access ever again.
Faliszek, who went on to co-found Stray Bombay in 2019, explained in a recent LinkedIn post (via GamesRadar+) why he will never go the early access route again when it comes to launching a game, saying that it's all due to how player counts on Steam are measured inaccurately on third-party sites like SteamDB.
"I think one of the reason [sic] I will never do early access again is... how player counts are seen by Steam and then downwind by the community," Faliszek said.
Stray Bombay launched The Anacrusis in early access in January 2022 and Faliszek explains that its Steam stats aren't accurate, saying, "SteamDB will say we have one player yesterday, we have 10,000. Some [because of] cross play sure, but also some just [because of] how [the stats] they get counted for small games. And that stat gets thrown out every time we do an update, any time anyone mentions us.
"There is some small number of people on Steam who just instantly want to post Dead Game and the [sic] state a stat sheet from SteamDB not just on our game, but any game that is under the threshold for the real numbers to be counted... and instead a number is synthesized on bad data and [is] always amazingly low."
The developer went on to explain that the way the stats are measured can affect how a game performs, saying that it "works against smaller developers trying to use the early access ecosystem for how it was designed" as well as for Stray Bombay which is aiming to officially release The Anacrusis on December 5.
As for the studio's new projects, Faliszek adds: "For future projects, it will be closed beta all the way."
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