Early Access - Good concept?

Early Access - Is it a good concept or not?

So this is reaaaally common these days. Games are released as Early Access for people to buy. Before I go into it more I will just give the background of the development that I will commentate in this post.

Background

At first video games were not connected to the Internet what so ever. That meant that the developers had no chance of releasing a patch to fix bugs and mistakes that were in the game after it is released. 
So when the game is released it is complete! End of story! If the companies failed to release the games without bugs they would get a bad reputation. I suppose that delays were more common back in these days since the companies really could not afford to release anything before it was complete.

Then the Internet came and the companies were able to patch the games after release to fix certain issues that the games had. I suppose this was good, because after all, not all bugs were found in the earlier era. 
There would always be glitches that players found. Now the companies could release a patch to fix things like that. 

With the Internet coming and more and more games become online games the world of gaming grew. Now companies could put up servers with the alpha and beta versions of the games to allow a certain amount of players to try it and give the development team some feedback.
You could sign up for a chance to test the game in the development stage. This was actually really fun the times where I actually got to test some games myself. 
Because in many ways you got to be special and try the games before all your mates that all wanted to play the same game. But they would have to wait for the release. Haha!

But these were all closed betas. With time, more and more open betas came. And I would say that the early access games that we see today is just simply open betas that people pay to play.

So these new early access games. Is the concept good?

Pros
- All players that wants to test it during development stages get the chance to do so.
- The development team gets a lot of feedback from players
- The developers get a lot of funds to be able to continue the development of the game
- Streamers might play the game and make it popular like with DayZ where the developers haven't spent a penny on commercial. Twitch & Youtube have done that for them.

Cons
- The developers get a lot of the revenues from the game even before they have even finished it. Will they bother to finish it? When purchasing a early access game there is a disclaimer saying that the game might end up in a way that you did not expect. There are sooo many games now that is released on early access and my guess is that many of them will stay that way.

I can't seem to come up with many cons although it is a fairly big one. Hopefully players will be able to foresee which games will go through with the development and which ones won't. 

Examples of Early Access Games

I mentionded DayZ as one of the games that have been riding on the wave of success that Twitch and Youtube have had with the streaming community. But DayZ have been in early access for a long time and won't get finished in the near future either if I remember it correctly.
This game started out as a mod for Arma2 and I am not so sure that they have changed soooo much since then. I might be wrong and then I apologize. But  when I tried it a few weeks back it felt a lot like the Arma2 mod. Since I liked the mod I was not all disappointed but I hope that they make a lot of progress in the development of that game. Now when they are competing against H1Z1 that is cheaper, and will be free-to-play and I'd say ahead in the development process. In the favor of DayZ is the fact that H1Z1 might be spending a lot of resources on the Battle Royale and not so much on the normal servers. 

H1Z1 is another tricky one. Their mode Battle Royale has had great success due to the streamers. But they said that when the game is going to be released it will be free-to-play! At the moment though they are selling a looot of copies and I believe it is around 20 euros a piece.
Why would they want to announce the game as finished and then begin to release it for free? The skeptical person in me says that will not happen for a loooong time.

The Forest is another survival horror game that is early access. When I got that game their Steam page stated that this was really early access alpha and it would take some time with a lot of problems during the development period. 
Oddly enough I haven't noticed any problems. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I (the player) do not play on servers that they are maintaining. When I play I create my own game and for multiplayer I have to host the game myself. 
There are constantly new patches with new content and old bugs getting fixed. So on the subject, this is a positive example so far.

I love the concept! But I don't like getting screwed. So I guess I am bound to be disappointed at times. I mean. Yea, it is cool to be able to try games out during the development process. If there is one! If the game is not having any progress then it is not early access. Then it is just a non-finished game that the developers are getting money for anyway.

I will try DayZ again someday soon to see what progress they have been making. Lets hope I am pleasently surprised. The Forest though is a great buy I'd say. There are gameplay videos on this blog under the "gaming" label.