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Comment by Svip | Hacker News Reader

I feel like it's kind of unfair to put Factorio's release date as 2020. Yes, that's what Steam says, and that's it's 1.0 release date. But Satisfactory is listed as 2020, and that is still in early access. So maybe note on the list when a game is still in early access?

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What does “early access” even mean nowadays? Seems like devs can label (or not label) a game as “early access” whenever they want. I’m guessing most do it as a way to set lower expectations to minimize bad reviews.

I think Factorio was early access longer than necessary, and Satisfactory also feels like it’s well beyond “early access”.

E.g. it’s not like “early access” means that they’re still making changes to the game, and stop making changes once the label is gone. I’ve seen “early access” games get abandoned (or even never see another update), and I’ve seen games out of “early access” still continue getting several updates.

Satisfactory feels like it's absolutely Early Access: Recent Satisfactory patches have changed the tech tree, broken existing production lines due to recipe changes, and even changed the geography of the world (one of my power plants is now inside a mountain, which makes it very difficult to change anything). They're also planning to add a plot involving the alien artifacts you find across the world, although so far nothing further is known.

That seems to be the clear line between "early access" and "Updates past 1.0": are you backwards compatible? Before 1.0, you don't have to worry about that, but I'd be very annoyed to find a new mountain in the middle of my base come 1.1

Satisfactory does often feel feature-complete, they could release the game as-is and I don't think it would feel particularly unfinished.

However it is unfinished by virtue of the fact that they have a lot more planned, and it's early access by virtue of having resources in the world with "WIP" in their tool tips.

I changed it to 2016, which is when Wikipedia says it entered early access. I also added an early access tag (thanks to a PR).

Sorry, the dates weren't meant to be a competition, and I just pulled whatever Steam listed it as! If you know of any other games that have an unfair date, please let me know :)

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