Hi everyone. Although this happens rarely, and seemed to disappear for a while, I’ve seen it pop up again recently. Please don’t penalise games you’ve read while in open beta on the forums with average reviews in the stores because they don’t have anything new. That is actually highly likely to occur, especially if the whole game was up for open testing. This will only lead to games becoming restricted to private testing threads to avoid this issue and less games availabile for you to try prior to release. Thankyou.
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This should be a pinned comment.
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People actually do that? 
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Yeah, I forget which new game it was, but I saw a 3-star review specifically complaining that the published game didn’t have any new content added since beta testing. That is a pretty garbage thing to do to an author.
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Unfortunately, there are a ridiculous amount of idiotic people just waiting around to leave colorful negative reviews on unsuspecting games for the most arbitrary, ridiculous reasons, and there’s not much we can do to combat that. We kinda just have to scratch our heads, move on, and hope the real reviews happen to balance things out.
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Yes so thought I’d says something so hopefully they see this and understand why it’s a bad idea to do that (and not nice to the author.) Haven’t seen it for a while until recently, but it starts happening every now and again where games (I seem to remember ZE was one, can’t remember others off the top of my head) get negative reviews from people complaining they’d played it for free and now it wasn’t or that it had nothing new since playing it on the forums.
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one issue is so many games arent on steam so if i use paypal i really cant get onto them there are so many games i would of got if they were on steam but i only buy half of them when there on the website
That’s an issue with steam charging cog per game + the extra costs of preparing them for that platform (there are other concerns) so they don’t put them on steam of they’re not sure they’ll recoup the costs of doing that. They’re a small business that has to stay afloat by being careful with costs and return so they can continue to make games so that’s fair enough really. But not sure what that has to do with leaving bad reviews on the games themselves though? You realise HG authors don’t decide whether to put the games on steam or not?
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That… What… But… Why would they add new content? The game was done! That’s why they needed beta testers! If they added new content, then they’d need new beta testers to beta test the new content and… I’m confused and my brain hurts.
Yup. The most popular of which being, “Why is this massive IF novel that’s over half a million words long and took the author 3 years to write not free?” 
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I read that comment too … the person mention the game was completed and released earlier with nothing new…
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Game testing is not the same beast that it was once. Marketers and “Bean-counter Suits” conceived of an idea of offering “previews” of their games which were mis-labeled as “free betas” or “paid betas”.
At first these promotions were for stress-testing and final polishing of MMOs and other such games but the idea of an open beta being shown and then the ultimate release being changed occurred because some publishers rushed their often broken products to the market hoping such events would substitute for real testing.
Now, terms are thrown about so loosely that “beta” has basically lost all real meaning to the general public and in the mass consciousness of the gaming community beta is often conflated with “preview” and “pre-release that is still being updated and changed.”
Sometimes the confusion is self-inflected as well - a WiP implies it is being updated and changed and not just tested … perhaps we should make a better effort to define where our projects are in their development (as a community). I feel your WiP thread does a better job of this than others but there still is no sure-fire way of preventing the confusion.
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Yes, I also read that comment, I was a bit shocked by it actually…
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The level of pretention many reviewers have is kinda offensive. 
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I think people are getting used a new strange ‘business’ model that’s come to be quite common as a result of sites like Patreon. Some authors like the regular income they can get from what I’ll loosely call customers by drip-feeding them content. They’ve started using the beta label to indicate something that’s released in chapters (or added content) so when these people come across a new download with no extra content, they feel cheated.
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I think the “games as a service” model is also a likely culprit.
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Using Patreon works well for some people, but not for others. Some authors would probably not get proper ‘Beta Testers’, as their games are so popular and widely anticipated, so with a free Beta, they may not get many proper testers, only people who want to play the full game before release and those who don’t want to pay for it. They may use things like Patreon to filter out those types of people, and only get people who are actually devoted to testing the game (as paying a monthly fee would be more than just paying for the game on full release.
In terms of what @Jacic said, I completely agree with their point. A lot of people (including myself) participate in open Betas, which are, in my opinion, more helpful to authors, as they get feedback from a much wider variety of users, not just a dozen or so signed up testers. If people who participate in open and closed Betas, suggest features and ask for even MORE features in reviews, this may just make the author do a Beta with only one or two people. Then people would just get lower quality work because it was not ran through enough testing to get feedback and ideas.
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Hosted Games won’t be published without a beta. It’s company policy.
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My mistake 
. I’ve edited my post to reflect that.
That is so selfish. First you get to play a hard worked game for free.even before those who are willing to pay.yet you complain. Beta is 90%if not 100 full game.only minor suggestions can be worked. How is a author going to add 50000 words because someone gave a advise.
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I know I cringe every time I see a big company use the word ‘beta’ for this reason. Hell, the word ‘alpha’ has also lost its meaning for much the same reason.
And I promise not to rant about early access…it feels really weird to see people actually pay to be bug testers for companies when said company should have its own QA dept.
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