On March 2013 Valve launched the Steam Early Access program, allowing customers to buy in-development games, giving them not only the aforementioned Early Access but also the ‘ability’ to help in the development and debugging of the game. The titles up for Early Access are usually in their Alpha stages, and the purchases give developers that little extra funding kick to continue developing.

But what most don’t realise, and what Valve and the developers don’t tell you, is that by getting into Early Access you’re effectively paying to work instead of the other way around.

Quality Assurance, the QA you see in many game credits, is an actual career choice and consists of the exact same thing you’re doing with an Early Access game. QA testers playtest games over and over again, scrubbing it to find every little bug, glitch, error, failing and shortcoming, so the developers can get right…