GOG has today launched their take on Steam’s Early Access, or as they call it, Games in Development.
Early Access can be great for developers but can be a nightmare for consumers who may end up with a finished product that wasn’t quite what they thought it would be. With that in mind, GOG are taking a cautious approach to the concept as GOG Managing Director Piotr Karwowski explains.
“Our goal has always been to offer a selection of titles that are both excellent and worth your time. Nowadays, we’re seeing more games that are already great experiences while still in development. We want all gamers on GOG.com to have access to what these titles have to offer, but we want to get it right, carefully evaluating each and every game, offering a 14-day refund policy, and providing GOG Galaxy support with update rollback and more.
“If a game update breaks something or introduces unwanted changes, GOG Galaxy lets you easily rollback to any previous version of your game while you wait for the fixes. As an added bonus, rollback actually stores historical snapshots throughout a game’s development – that means you can always revisit any point in the game’s history with a single click.”
To get things started GOG has launched the following titles with up to 40% off.
- Starbound
- Ashes of the Singularity
- Project Zomboid
- TerraTech
- Curious Expeditions
The good news for consumers is that there’s a no questions asked 14 day refund policy on all games still in development. GOG say, “It doesn’t matter if you’re having technical issues, if you don’t think the game is fleshed-out enough yet, or if it simply doesn’t click with you — all games in development can be returned for any reason”.
The launch of GOG’s Games in Development should be welcomed by PC gamers, Steam needs some competition in this space, and let’s face it, Steam support is not exactly stellar.
