CoG Requirements for Hosted Beta

[Havenstone]

Have a look at this thread, in which I link to a bunch of earlier ones and there’s clarification that “public” doesn’t mean “open”:

@Havenstone

Quoting @jasonstevanhill here, the open beta COG requires for Hosted Games does not mean “you have to post it so any rando can play without contacting the author.” It means at a minimum that the beta has to be publicly announced on the forum, and forum members who express interest are allowed to join a private message thread where they’re given access to your draft.

@jasonstevanhill

To follow up to Havenstone, if you say “I did a beta!” but you mean, “my three best friends and my mom played it and they all told me it was awesome!” that doesn’t mean it was given a beta test. We want to see the community given a real opportunity to engage an author in a dialogue.

In particular, when we at Hosted Games are trying to decide if we should expend money/capital on a game (putting it on Steam, putting it in a mailer, tweeting about it), Rachel gives her input, and then we look at the beta thread to see how the community has responded. Thus, whether the game is freely accessible or not, letting us see the feedback of the beta testers helps us decide how we market it.