This is a petition for gamers by gamers.

Steam Early Access needs to be completely reworked. Below are a list of criteria we the gamers feel should be met by anyone wishing to utilize Steam Early Access. This list is designed to both ensure that people purchasing Early Access games (hereby referred to as supporters) are protected and Early Access developers (hereby referred to as devs) have the highest chance of a successful campaign.

These criteria are as follows:

• Devs are required to set a timeline and provide a feature list for their Early Access Campaign and adhere to it.
• Release is hereby defined as the completion of the aforementioned timeline.
• Devs are allowed a 3 month grace period of deviation from timeline to allow for unforeseen complications. This is for the entire campaign and should be used judiciously by devs.
• Devs are required to provide a working demo along with their timeline and feature list.
• Regular communication is expected between devs and supporters. The interval of these communications can be defined by the devs but should not exceed 1 month intervals.
• Micro-transactions are NOT acceptable before release. Micro-transaction content is additional content and you cannot have additional content until the base content has officially released.
• At each benchmark supporters will be provided the opportunity to vote on whether or not the dev have stayed current with the timeline.
• If the devs fall behind and have expended their grace period the game will be removed from sale on steam until the timeline is brought current.
• If the game needs additional time for a significant pivot, said pivot can be put to a supporter vote along with a revised timeline and feature list.
• Refunds are available to supporters at failed benchmarks and upon final release if the majority of supporters agree that the game has not completed it's feature set. This is to protect supporters who by participating in the development of the game are losing access to steam's standard refund policy.

Early access is a wonderful thing that has produced wonderful games but for every successful Early Access campaign there are many others that fail to deliver and leave their supporters with a half finished product they have no ability to refund. This list was created by gamers with devs in mind. We the gamers strongly believe that Early Access will be more successful for both supporters and devs if the Valve Corporation enforces this simple list of criteria. All of the requested criteria can have infinitely scaling solutions built around them in Steam.

Thank you for joining the cause,
Gamerunderdevelopment

If you have more suggestions please email:
gamerunderdevelopment@gmail.com