Steam Early Access Is Growing, but Player Expectations Keep Rising

The number of Early Access games on Steam keeps growing, but so do player expectations, according to a GamesIndustry.biz feature.

SteamDB data cited in the report shows that 2,924 Early Access games launched on Steam in 2026 as of mid-October, which is 18% more than in 2025 and 60% more than in 2020.

Anthony Gallegos, creative director of Subnautica 2, says that Early Access is no longer limited to a few "edge-case" games. It can mean a project like Subnautica 2 that does long-term open development, or a game about three months from a 1.0 release that effectively runs a paid beta soft launch and uses the Early Access label to soften player expectations. The result, he says, is a "more diverse and confusing landscape."

Competition is also higher than ever. Daniel Knight, CEO and Game Director at Phasmophobia maker Kinetic Games, says that whether in Early Access or at 1.0, new releases need to be at "a much higher quality." Richard Svensson, CEO of Valheim developer Iron Gate, believes that player expectations for an Early Access game are about 20% lower than for a full release, but players still expect a "polished game."

The bar is especially high for smaller teams, as players compare everything in the same marketplace, says Ethan McKinnon, Creative Director at Apocalypse Studios. "Developers need to treat Early Access like a real launch, because players do," he adds.

To get an insightful look at what matters for successfully releasing a game on Steam, check out our interview with GEM Capital's Roman and Kirill Gurskiy, who break down how investors evaluate Steam wishlists, demos, discoverability, and commercial potential in today's crowded PC market, and our talk with Assemble Entertainment on the realities of indie publishing in 2026 and why discoverability has never been harder.

Also, you might be interested in some of the success stories of Steam releases that we featured before – how the creators of the farming and coding sim The Farmer Was Replaced grew revenue after the full release, and how a solo developer of Idle Pixel Fantasy Max Ritters achieved $4.8K in gross revenue, attracted 23.3K players, and sold 4.4K DLC packs.