Would Early Access have Saved Darktide?

In spite of its impressive co-op combat, Darktide did not enjoy the best of launches. With much of the crafting system missing, an arduous loot and progression system and a microtransaction store added at launch to rub the salt into the wounds, its safe to say that many players were not happy and the number of people playing the game quickly collapsed as a result, leaving the developers at Fatshark with a lot of work to do to bring the game up to standard. 

Given that Darktide had already been significantly delayed prior to its eventual launch, it might have been better for Fatshark to pursue an early access launch rather than their string of short beta tests that happened in the run-up to the game's launch. But would this have really been much better? 

The closed beta and pre-order beta that Fatshark ran in Darktide really only gave them a few weeks to address any issues prior to release - insufficient to make any major changes to game systems. They placed a lot of confidence in the strength and quality of the game, which is fair enough, but they also seriously limited their own options by committing to this path.  

The main benefit of Early Access would have been that players interested in the game could have tested it for a much longer amount of time, and Fatshark would've had considerably longer to address the feedback, complete the crafting system and address the problems with progression and loot that Darktide has.

Players who bought the game in early access would've naturally had lower expectations, and the criticism would've been considerably less harsh. 

It probably would've been better to omit adding the microtransactions and cash shop until the game was fully released in this scenario, which might have cut back somewhat on the revenue initially made from the game, but in the long-term this would have resulted in a much better perception of Darktide. 

Warhammer: Vermintide 2, Fatshark's previous game, also had some problems when it released and unfortunately it seems that lessons were not learned from this. Vermintide 2 is a great game now, so it seems likely that Fatshark will fix the main problems with Darktide over the coming months - the question is how many potential long-term players were lost due to the game's poor launch?

Darktide's current player count is currently struggling to beat that of Vermintide 2 (a game that is nearly five years old), and if this state of affairs does not drastically improve over the coming months then Fatshark will likely have some considerable regrets about not either pursuing a different launch strategy or further delaying the game's release. 

We hope you enjoyed this article about Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.