What one studio says the media, gamers, and developers get wrong about Steam’s Early Access

Steam’s Early Access is a bit of a mystery. Players know it enables them to try out upcoming PC and Mac games before they launch, but it’s easy to chalk the program up as any other beta or alpha release.

To Jean-Francois Major, the cofounder of Mercenary Kings developer Tribute Games, both assessments aren’t wrong as much as they’re inadequate. The program — part of Valve’s digital-games distribution service, Steam — was the next step in the 2D action-platformer’s public development after it exceeded its crowdfunding goal of $75,000 (it raised $116,064 total) on Kickstarter in September 2012. We followed the indie studio’s progress with Early Access from when it began last year in August through the seven months leading up to Mercenary King’s launch today, March 25, for PC and April 1 for PlayStation 4.