Steam’s new Playtest feature allows developers to invite Steam users to play test their games without the need for separate beta keys and beta Steam Store pages.
Interested users can request to join a games’ Playtest directly from the games’ Steam Store page in the Steam client, on the Steam website, or through the Steam app:
Valve says that Playtests aren’t intended to replace Steam Early Access, and that games can even have a Playtest alongside an Early Access version. Playtests also won’t support commerce or monetization. Valve notes that Steam Playtests are in beta right now and that the tools are subject to change
There doesn’t yet seem to be a dedicated way to search for Playtest enabled games, other than running a simple Steam search for the term “playtest”. I only checked about a third of the 100-odd results as after about #20 there did not seem to be any more.
That said, despite the search process being less than perfect, it did allow me to identify a handful of games that are Playtest enabled in addition to Total War: Elysium, which seems to have been the test game for the feature:
(Click on the game name in this list to go to the Store page without adding it to your Wishlist)
I’ve requested access to Mason and to Lab Rat, and will post a follow up once I hear if I’m accepted or not.
So, it seems that, despite what it says, system notifications are not working yet. Was expecting a mail to tell me that I’d been accepted for the Mason playtest, but only realized I had when I went back to the games’ Store Page later, and saw the Playtest thing had changed:
Unfortunately, it doesn’t start for me at the moment. Have messaged the developer with details of the problem. So, I guess the idea behind Playtests is working as intended.
The other one I applied for, Lab Rats, hasn’t changed yet:
And a few hours and one hotfix patch later, and I can launch the game. It looks good, but will need to find a while to play test properly now that I can at least get into it.
A little bit of both I’m thinking, but with the focus on allowing testing and to avoid having to create a separate Steam entry for Alpha or Beta programmes. It’s a way for devs to control who to give access to to their games while in early development without the admin and issues associated with issuing and controlling Alpha/Beta Steam keys.
It’s not meant to replace the existing Steam Early Access system, so once a dev thinks their game is at a playable enough point they could still make it available for sale as an Early Access title, while keeping their development branch (and their approved playtesters) separate.
That Mason game I got going is still pretty barebones, so in this case it’s definitely more of a testing for free thing.
