No Rest for the Wicked, the action RPG from Ori and Blind Forest developer Moon Studios, launched into Early Access on Steam last week, and it’s actually pretty good. Not everyone is completely taken with it though: plenty of negative reviews poured in soon after release, complaining about a range of issues including performance, balance and a general lack of polish.
Moon Studios quickly responded to these complaints with an update that promises improvements to come. “This is early access, so you’ll see a lot of things improve as we continually try to optimize and improve the game with your feedback,” the studio said.
Even before it released, some players had expressed concerns about No Rest for the Wicked’s early access—mainly wondering how “early” the game would be—and after launch there were suggestions that the game wasn’t even ready for an early access version. For the most part, though, players seem to appreciate it, as seen in the game’s climb from a “mixed” to “mostly positive” rating over the course of a week.
Regardless of all that and whatever anyone else may think about it, Moon Studios CEO and Creative Director Thomas Mahler has no regrets, calling the Early Access release “one of the best decisions we could have made.”
“I see some people are still bothered by why games like Wicked, Hades 2, the new Larian game, etc. are launching in Early Access even though the studio ‘should have the funds to finish the game and release it then,’” ” wrote Mahler Twitter. “But that’s looking at a complex problem through too simple a lens.
“I think as games become more complex and sophisticated, we will increasingly see some form of early access. Speaking from personal experience, we could never release [No Rest for the] Wicked 1.0 without being able to see all the data we see now and receive all the feedback from users. And I mean real users, not a focus testing group. Even if we had 2-3 times the staff, it would have simply been impossible, the product is simply too complex to reasonably expect. Nine women can’t make a baby in a month and all that.”
Mahler went even further, saying that other games released before Early Access existed would have been better if they had been able to take advantage of it: “Imagine [if] Dark Souls 1 would have been in Early Access: instead of rushing to ship a boxed product in a somewhat unfinished state, they probably would have been able to look at the second half of that game and still fully shape and polish it. refined areas like Lost Izalith, etc.”
In general, I tend not to play Early Access games (I prefer to wait for the full, finished product) and I wonder if studios sometimes damage their future fortunes by releasing a game before it’s fully ready: Nightingale is an example of an early game. and a promising game that’s currently saddled with a “mixed” rating on Steam because it’s still in development.
But the advantages are also clear. As Mahler said, Early Access provides a tester pool that simply isn’t available any other way, and the success of games like Baldur’s Gate 3, which spent nearly three years in Early Access, is proof that it can work . Conversely, Cyberpunk 2077’s lack of fame led to suggestions that it should have been an Early Access game (and, in a way, it was).
The bottom line is that there is clearly room for early access in the contemporary gaming market, and it won’t disappear, a point Mahler made. “Even if you don’t like the idea of early access: it’s a way to allow developers to truly refine a product over time, so understand that there is value in that,” he wrote. “I am confident that we will see games created through Early Access programs that would never have been made without EA.”
Mahler also encouraged Sony and Nintendo to “embrace early access” in a sequel tweet. “The industry is changing at a rapid pace and maintaining things that were the norm 5-10 years ago is too restrictive,” she wrote.
“At the end of the day people just want to play great games. It shouldn’t matter how the game is developed, as long as it is, and if players can’t have a great experience on your platform, you’re doing your audience a disservice.”
For now, work on No Rest for the Wicked is continuing at a good pace. Since the game’s launch on April 18, four hotfixes have already been released, mainly focused on resolving performance and balance issues.