Update January 31, 2017: We originally published this feature on the day EarlyNinja's Kickstarter went live, but took it down after a number of developers voiced concerns that their games were being used by EarlyNinja without their consent. We've since reached out to marketing manager Andrea D'Agostino for comment, and he provided us with a full statement clarifying the situation, in additon to the company's blog post which aims to do the same.
"It was never our intention to provoke or offend developers by proposing images of their games," D'Agostino tells us. "We sincerely apologize for having done this. Our intention was to use the voting portal, which is nothing else than a poll, to gather user preferences on the games they'd like to have on the platform once live.
We never hinted to have those games already on board or to have agreements with developers."
You can read D'Agostino's full statement here.
Original story: It’s not controversial to suggest that a certain proportion of gamers are unhappy with Steam Early Access. The service, which allows people to buy and play incomplete games to help fund a developer, has a diverse collection of stories ranging from super successful to disappointment and even deceit.
Like you games complete? You won't find an early access title in our list of the best PC games.
Stefano Brighenti doesn’t like Early Access. Well, he does, but he doesn’t like how Steam runs the service. So he’s set up his own pre-release system: EarlyNinja. It’s like Early Access, but has been designed to prevent the issues that can rear their head in Valve’s original service.
What is wrong with Steam Early Access?
So just what is wrong with Steam Early Access? Brighenti is pretty clear, believing the system is flawed for both gamers and developers.
“The biggest issue that gamers have right now is that they are investing in the developers, but they don't have any way out if something goes wrong,” he explains. “Right now you spend your money and it's like gambling on the developers. You don't know when the game will be finished or when to expect the next major update.”