Let's not pretend that Baldur's Gate 3 wasn't one of the highest priced Early Access titles on Steam for mostly all of its development. Usually Early Access games start at $20, get bumped up to $30 half way through and have a release price of around $40. Baldur's Gate 3 ~~came out swinging with $40 on day one, and now, on "release"~~, sits at a hefty $60. While reviews on Steam remained "Very Positive" through it's development, most positive reviews read like: "This is going to be good when it's done" and "This is an improvement on older BG titles", while the negative ones read like: "The game is riddled with bugs and missing content.". Those are pretty much telltale signs of a little bit to overambitious Early Access game. My opinion back then was, paying a $40 price tag to essentialy be a playtester is to much. But still I kept an eye out for progress.

What genuenly kept saving their face, was them being always prettier then the competition and having a very strong intro section to their game. The visuals were clearly the focus in early development, as well as the character design. The characters (male and female) looked so good, they could have been straight out of a porn mod for skyrim. And those sharp looking characters were highly represented on the Steam storepage. The intro was a proven "shit's going down, we gotta her out of here" trope, that many games use to through the player into epic action early in the game. You reel the player I with fancy looks, and keep them by throwing them into fun.

Would they have slipped into "Mixed" or "Mostly Negative" reviews, nobody would've been willing to excuse the $40 price. They would either bleed funds or have to adjust the price down to $30 or$ 20, both of which would affect further progress.

Baldur's Gate 3 is an anomaly in a sense off a gamble playing out in their favor. They asked to much and hoped nobody with lose their patience and reviewbomb them. They relied on their community and got lucky again of having basically zero competition to tear away their player base. If say Dragon Age: Inquisition would have taken the pedestal instead of just being mediocre, BG3 would have had a hard time taking back their playerbase in time when income is most important. But in the end it worked out because the devs delivered an actually functioning and excellent game.

I would not like to see the gaming market if every Early Access game asking for $40 on the promise of "Thrust us, it's going to be good, ...maybe." would become the new standard.