Steam Early Access allows early access to upcoming games

Valve seems to be taking another shot at attempting to bridge the communication gap between game developers and gamers. The company has kicked off a new feature on its digital distribution platform Steam that gives gamers the option to buy unfinished games while they are in beta or alpha stages.Much like Steam Greenlight, this seems like another attempt at getting gamers to have more of a say in the development of games. It essentially gives other developers the option to have a similar funding model to that of Mojang's sandbox game Minecraft.When Minecraft was still in development, Mojang released the alpha version of the game so that those interested could  buy the game at a reduced price and play it, and invariably help with the bug testing. This worked out great for the company, as the game was hit right from its alpha days. Click here for full story