ABOUT Early Access Watcher

Who Watches The Developing?

With the large amount of past and present games remaining in Early Access, it is up to us to swim against the currents and reveal what is still wading around. From the newly labeled to those who just cannot seem to leave, we try to bring to light what these games are doing to get that title out the door to an actual launch.

Abandonware Focused Curator: https://steamproxy.net/groups/earlyaccesswatcher2

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RECENT ANNOUNCEMENTS

Group Update - The Plan of Action

9 May - Mellow_Online1 | 0 Comments

Hi all!

No, this group isn't dead!

Well, it was. Wonder if we got tagged on any curators as abandonware...

Anyway, apologies for the long absence. Shortly after I took on the group, those that follow me on Sentinels of the Store will also know, I went on a lengthy break of about a year and a half. Not intended, but that's just how life goes sometimes. I made a return to Sentinels in August last year and this group was always going to be my next stop. However, my main problem was I was struggling with a sense of direction and how to go about tackling this group, as well as Early Access Watcher 2.

My main issue came down to three things:

The pre-existing curations I was apprehensive on removing as so much work had already been done by Mute chronicling these games, however, when I went about updating these lists, the fact some were on the curator, but had since received updates since Mute's coverage proved difficult to effectively comb through everything to know what was abandoned and what wasn't.
The formatting of the curations has always been a blend of information and also personal opinion. This is a move I found quite tricky to uphold, as it doesn't lend itself well when there's an excessive backlog to keep ontop of.
When I opened the question to the community, many expressed their keen-ness on games being tagged even when they left Early Access to alert buyers of how the development went. However, this would lead to an even more overwhelming backlog, as I then needed to track down games that were at full release, but had previously been in early access.

Because I found these points incredibly difficult to go about working alongside, I've taken a few extra months before returning to this so that I could sit, stew and think about how I could make this work. And I do have a plan. Some may like it, some may hate it, others may be indecisive, however it's the best solution I've settled upon to make the coverage of these games manageable, and to ensure these groups continue their activity of, what I feel, is a very important cause.

Now, changes won't be getting rolled out for at least another couple of weeks, so if you guys do think I'm incredibly missing the mark, now is your time to voice it, however I do feel quite strongly this will be the way forward:

All curations on both groups will be purged on June 14th

This is to allow me to start the curations afresh and not lose track on the status updates on all the games currently tagged. Going through and editing these curations will take up much more time than writing them afresh.

Curations will now only include Early Access games that are either abandonware or on a hiatus

This means there won't be much more in terms of the opinion curations that are present. Again, this is to allow for more ground to be covered on abandonware games that are still charging for a game that never got completed. If you wish to see what the quality of a game in early access is, I recommend heading to YouTube videos and/or the Steam reviews.

This also helps to further contain the cause of the group, providing consumers with information regarding a game's active development, and entrusting consumers to make their own informed decision on their perceived take on the quality of the game, and our tagged status reports on how development is going.

Games will be tagged as abandonware if there has been no communication nor any depot updates within the last year. A hiatus tag will be shown in instances where while there may have been no updates, the developers have maintained communication and been transparent about any problems that may be facing the game's development.

Communication on social media will not be counted

This is again due to time constraints and to allow for a streamlined process to get through thousands of games. At the end of the day, developers and publishers should be making use of either Steam news feeds or community hub discussions to alert players in addition to social media.

I am abandoning the idea of tagging fully released previously Early Access Titles

It may be something that's very disappointing for some, but the fact of the matter is that this would take up an exceptional level of time, and I feel it's time that is unnecessary to invest when the Steam reviews are a good source of what the current public opinion is on the game. If a game released from Early Access unfinished and in a bad state, the reviews will reflect this. I hate going back on feedback, but I feel this is necessary to allow the group to get back to basics and get caught up with its backlog.

I will be spending the next few months, a few hours a week going through all of the current Early Access library on Steam, which currently consists of 8,037 games

I am only going to be going through the entire Early Access Roster once, as it will be incredibly demanding to get through and look at comms and depot updates for all of these games, but once this massive hurdle has cleared, it will make things a lot easier.

From the point of where all the games pre-2023 have been tagged, I will then leave this down to more casual observations

This includes developers (like what I have seen the last few months) emailing me to alert me that they have started updating and developing again, members of the community alerting me to games they suspect have been abandoned in our discussions, as well as via email. But I'm sure you understand this would be inadvisable to do until after this initial clearance of games is completed so that we can get a handle on the backlog, so I do hope you understand and that patience can be exercised.

Thanks once more for exercising patience while I've gotten a grip back on Sentinels and I hope for the same to happen here.

Please do let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I'm happy to keep this dialogue open.

Oh, also, if any of you are budding artists that feel like having a crack at a new logo for the group, I would certainly appreciate and encourage this! The current one works still in the interim, but I would be keen to get it changed up!

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E-mail me: mellowonline1@gmail.com

Early Access Watcher is Under New Ownership

7 March, 2022 - Mellow_Online1 | 5 Comments

Hi all!

My name is Mellow_Online1 and I am the new owner of both Early Access Watcher groups, taking over from the previous owner and creator The Mute Cynic.

Some of you may be familiar with me for my work over on the Sentinels of the Store curator group or for my uber cool tweets that I post.

I would like to thank The Mute Cynic for firstly entrusting me to keep both Early Access Watcher groups up and running, and also secondly for his 6 years of great service that he has given to the Steam community. He is a very dedicated person, and the fact he kept this group up and running for as long as he did, in my eyes, is an accomplishment in and of itself.

I recognise the great need for a group like this to continue to exist in the current climate of Steam, and hence why I approached Mute and asked if I could continue with what he started to do.

This of course is no easy undertaking and I recognise that, and Mute even pre-emptively warned me that a lot of work is to be done in terms of addressing the group's backlogs in terms of updating the current curations, but in the interest of the curator's followers and the people who rely on this group for trusted information on Early Access titles, it is something I'm willing to commit to.

These changes however, will not happen overnight, and I will also be making a few changes to the groups, how they operate, along with the staff and the format in which they will function, but I do have some big ideas and high hopes to push this group forward.

To let you know of what I will be working on in the coming weeks on this group, my plan of action includes:

Bringing on a staff of administrators and moderators to help facilitate the group's functionality, as well as to help cover the large backlog of games.
Bringing on a team of reviewers to help broaden the horizons of the amount of coverage that can be offered.
Overhauling the curator system, so that this group will be used to keep tabs on the status of early access titles (active development, development paused and abandoned) and use the second one more for proper reviews of Early Access games.
Create listings on both curator pages to allow for easy filtration of titles.
Go through ALL of the games curated by the 2 groups (yes, all 3,000+) and review their activity and note if they need to be moved to the other group.
Implementing a combined function with this group and Sentinels of the Store's Discord server to allow for an easy method of submitting games for review here.
Tidying up discussion forums and threads to make browsing easy and allow users to submit games either for review or to alert of any development activity.
Place a contact method in for developers/publishers to quickly alert us of any changes to the development activity of the games or to send games in for review by the second curator group.
Create a new logo (Mute requested for me to remove the old logo of the group, and out of respect for him, I have fulfilled this request, hence why we have an under construction logo on both groups).
Take in further feedback from you all to see what else you would want to see on this page. Please leave your input for now in the comment section on this post..

Like I said, this will not be something that happens overnight, and time is needed to be able to implement and complete all of these, so I ask for a few things from the community here:

1) Patience. I plan to give regular updates both on my Twitter and I plan to make a post here at least once a month (but aim for more frequently) with notes on how close we are to completing the list I've set out above.

2) Input and feedback. If you have any ideas or feedback based on what I've set out here, please make a comment on this announcement and I am more than happy to hear it.

3) Volunteers. While I plan to implement my own staff members over from Sentinels, I will still be on the lookout, both for members to act as moderators, and also even for members to act as reviewers for this page. I believe this will be an effective way of being able to tackle the large backlog of games in early access. While this of course naturally helps the group to cover a wider field, I see it as also a good chance for any up and coming writers and reviewers to get their work in front of the sister group's following and to also help network with more reviewers and writers. If you're interested in any of these positions, please do send me an e-mail to mellowonline1@gmail.com as we will definitely need your help to both keep this group going and for it to become bigger and better than before.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to help steer this ship, I'd like to thank Mute once again for entrusting managing this group over to me, and we will continue to hold early access developers to account and to keep the customers informed on the games they are buying.

Thank you.
Mellow