Early Access

[Kobi Blade 3]

Early Access games pages say at the top,

Quote

This product is unreleased but remains under active development - information may change frequently and could be outdated or irrelevant.

Should be obvious the games are released, but under active development.

[macgovern 3]

PCGW considers games in Early Access games to not have been released as Early Access is, in essence, the developers allowing the public to pay for access to an unreleased game in order to give feedback on it.

[Aemony 142]

The "Early Access" state is complicated in that sense since the game hasn't "officially" been "released", but is still available for purchase during its development until it is finished.

Some games use the EA phase properly, with a game under heavy active development, with frequent progress resets and whatnot. Others use it more as a post-release phase where additional content is either made available or finalized, while the foundation of the game remains relatively unchanged.

For now, PCGamingWiki has decided to mirror Steam's handling of these types of games, where the "release date" and so "release state" of a game is only really set when the game leaves Early Access. This is also mirrored by how EA is set as a special "release date" in the infobox, which doesn't actually populate any date for the game.

For the {{State|Early Access}} template/banner in particular, the "EA" state is right now handled as just another synonym for the "in development" type (the same banner is used for a bunch of previously separate but now generalized states such as "prealpha", "alpha", "beta", etc).

[Kobi Blade 3]

I understand your reasoning, I apologize for bothering you guys.

[Aemony 142]

No worries -- we welcome these sorts of inquiries since they can sometimes result in a re-evaluation and change as a pair of new eyes approach it differently from staff members.