Steam adds Early Access category

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Games in alpha and beta get their own corner of the digital storefront

Calling all test subjects: Steam has added an Early Access category to its storefront made just for games in alpha and beta.

Well, they're often cheaper, for one; as is the case with the $33 Arma 3 Alpha. Other notable Early Access titles include Kerbal Space Program, Prison Architect, and Drunken Robot Pornography (we didn't make that last one up, that would be unethical).

The Steam presence also smooths out the patchy-by-design nature of in-development games, with updates streaming down automatically. And of course, devoted players can provide plenty of feedback on each game's progress with Steam's built-in community pages.

Coupled with productivity tools and the (admittedly imperfect) Steam Greenlight, the service is becoming a one-stop shop for creating and playing PC games.

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.