AAA Early Access Games Are Raising Expectations for Indie Developers, Apocalypse CEO Says

Early Access was built around a simple, occasionally chaotic bargain: players accept that a game is unfinished, and developers gain the time, funding and feedback to improve it in public. Denis Dyack, CEO of Apocalypse Studios and founder of Silicon Knights, argues that bargain is being strained when publishers with far larger budgets and teams enter the same storefront label with games that already look highly polished.

Dyack’s concern is not that large studios are technically barred from Early Access. Rather, it is that their participation can reset the standard players apply to every game carrying the tag. In his view, a publisher can release something close to a finished product, turn its Early Access status into a promotional moment, and leave customers expecting similarly polished work from smaller teams still using the program as a genuinely collaborative stage of development.

That gap matters because Early Access is not just a label beside a product page. It is a public promise about what a game is now, what it may become later, and how much disruption buyers should reasonably expect while it gets there. If the market comes to read it as a soft-launch badge rather than a development process, independent studios may face the difficult task of explaining why their incomplete game is, in fact, incomplete.

Two views of the same development model

Dyack cites Subnautica 2 and Path of Exile as examples of games he believes have changed the landscape and player expectations. His position is blunt: “AAA publishers are abusing Early Access,” creating an environment that “heavily disadvantages smaller independent developers.” He says Apocalypse Studios encountered meaningful barriers getting attention for Deadhaus Sonata, reducing its market impact.

Apocalypse creative director Ethan McKinnon frames the issue less as a rule violation and more as a marketplace reality. Players see titles presented together and compare them together, regardless of the budgets, staff counts or development histories behind them. His practical advice to prospective developers is therefore simple: treat Early Access as a real launch, because the audience already does.

That does not necessarily mean all Early Access projects should be expected to ship in nearly final form. It means the first impression has lasting consequences. A buyer arriving on day one may judge performance, usability, visual quality, content, communication and stability as parts of a purchase, not as caveats to be deferred until a future version. For smaller teams, the challenge is that those expectations may be difficult to meet while they are still relying on player input to determine what the final game should be.

There is a clear counterargument from the Subnautica 2 team. Creative director Anthony Gallegos says launching the sequel in Early Access was effectively an obvious choice following its predecessor. He describes the format as allowing the developers to pivot and make substantial changes that would be much harder after releasing a complete experience and merely hoping its design decisions were correct. For that team, Early Access is “core to our DNA now.”

Those positions are not wholly incompatible. Both sides describe Early Access as a means to change a game in response to its players. The disagreement is over the effect of large, polished projects on everyone else using the same route to market. A well-resourced game can use public feedback while appearing finished enough to satisfy customers from the outset. A smaller game may need that feedback before it can reach comparable confidence and quality. Yet both projects can sit under the same two-word label.

What “collaborative development” actually asks of players

In Dyack’s description, the purpose of Early Access is a collaborative development process based on player feedback. In practice, that means buyers are not only consuming the game; their reports and reactions can influence its direction. Feedback may reveal that a progression system is unclear, that a feature is unpopular, or that a technical problem is hitting a substantial portion of the audience. A team can then adjust course before declaring its work complete.

The important word is development. A game in this phase may be actively changing, not merely receiving routine fixes. The form of that change is not specified by the Early Access label alone. It can involve performance work, balance decisions, systems, content priorities or broader revisions. That uncertainty is the value of the model for a developer, but it can also be its toughest sell to a player who expects an immediate, smooth, full-featured experience.

Dyack says the model was intended to give studios room to take chances on unconventional, systemic concepts that conventional publishers might reject in favor of risk-averse, “paint-by-numbers” design. A systemic game, in this context, is one built around interacting rules and player-driven possibilities rather than only a fixed sequence of pre-planned moments. Such designs can particularly benefit from a live audience: the developers may learn how people actually use, combine or circumvent their systems in ways internal planning did not anticipate.

But experimentation is not a universal shield against disappointment. Players paying for access can reasonably care about how the game performs and whether its current state matches what has been communicated. The tension lies in balancing room to experiment with accountability for the experience offered today. Clear expectations are therefore not peripheral marketing copy; they are central to whether the Early Access relationship works.

Deadhaus Sonata illustrates the cost of a rough start

Dyack’s comments are also shaped by Apocalypse Studios’ own experience. Deadhaus Sonata launched with performance problems, which he calls demoralising. He says the negative response nevertheless became motivation to rebuild the game from the ground up.

That is a significant distinction. A performance issue is not simply a disagreement over a mechanic or artistic direction. It affects whether players can reliably engage with the game at all. When a project begins in a visibly rough condition, the studio has to contend with the technical work itself and with the reputation formed by the first wave of reactions. McKinnon’s warning to approach Early Access as a full launch speaks directly to that pressure.

For players, it is useful to separate three ideas that can otherwise get blurred together: unfinished, experimental and functional. An Early Access game can be unfinished because content, balance or systems are still evolving. It can be experimental because its creators are testing an unusual approach. Neither description automatically answers whether its present performance is acceptable to a given buyer. Reading what the developer says is currently implemented, what is being reworked and what feedback it wants can be more informative than treating the label as either a warning sign or a guarantee.

For studios, the public nature of the process raises the stakes of every initial build. A player may be willing to wait for a revision, but that willingness depends on trust: that the team understands the problem, communicates without overpromising and shows a credible route forward. Dyack’s account of rebuilding Deadhaus Sonata positions the negative launch reception as an impetus for substantive change, not just a prompt for minor patching.

Why polish can become a competitive pressure

It is easy to see why big-budget Early Access releases appeal to players. A more polished starting point can lower the risk that customers associate with buying an unfinished game. It can also widen the pool of useful feedback, since more people may be prepared to participate if the basic experience already feels stable and inviting. Gallegos’ argument for Subnautica 2 suggests that high production values and meaningful iteration do not have to be opposites.

Dyack’s criticism instead identifies a knock-on effect. If a polished release becomes the reference point, an independent studio may be judged against it before its own feedback loop has had time to do its intended job. The issue is not merely visual presentation. Players may expect an expansive feature set, a trouble-free launch and immediate responsiveness at the same time a small team is still gathering evidence about what should change.

This is why “Early Access” can no longer be assumed to communicate a single, shared level of readiness. The label describes a route through development, but the current quality and scope of games following that route can vary enormously. Players comparing two titles should consider the details each team provides about its present build and the role community feedback will play, rather than assuming that one polished project defines the state of every other work in progress.

The broader industry discussion also connects to games that continue evolving after release. Ongoing support and repeated updates are now familiar parts of PC gaming, as seen with projects such as the latest No Man’s Sky Forsaken update. Post-launch updates and Early Access are not identical models, however. The latter makes the unfinished status part of the initial commercial relationship, which makes the starting condition and the promised feedback process especially important.

The practical takeaway for players and developers

Dyack’s argument should not be read as proof that every major publisher using Early Access is acting in bad faith, nor does Gallegos’ defense establish that a polished Early Access release harms smaller teams by default. The supplied accounts show a genuine conflict of incentives: developers value the freedom to change course with the community, while players increasingly expect an experience worthy of its price and visibility on day one.

For players, the sensible approach is to judge an Early Access purchase on its present state rather than on a generalized assumption about the badge. A project may be compelling because it is evolving, but its future ambitions are not the same thing as current functionality. For developers, McKinnon’s observation is the sharpest operational lesson: public access is a launch in the audience’s eyes. Planning for that reality means treating performance, messaging and the first experience as core development work, even when the game is expressly unfinished.

Early Access can still provide the runway for ambitious systems and responsive design that Dyack describes. But as more differently resourced companies use the same path, the label alone does less explanatory work. The burden shifts to teams to be precise about what players are buying now—and to players to decide whether the game as it exists today merits joining its development journey.