The developer of Hades 2, Supergiant, has provided some advice on how studios should approach launching a game into Steam Early Access.
Speaking to GamesRadar, the company’s founder and creative director, Greg Kasavin, said that picking when to release your project into paid alpha is a tricky balancing act. The game needs to have enough content to make it worthwhile purchasing, but also not so much that it leaves you unable to make tweaks to its design.
“Deciding when to launch a game into Early Access is an important decision for a developer,” Kasavin explained.
“You want your game to be far enough along that it can be played and enjoyed without a lot of caveats, but you don’t want your game to be so far along that you don’t have time to respond to all the feedback you get.”
Kasavin continued, saying that Hades 2 was “designed for Early Access development”, much like the original Hades.
“[It’s] a game where listening to and responding to player feedback would be core to the development process,” he said.
Hades 2 was announced back at The Game Awards back in 2022 alongside Death Stranding 2 and Armored Core 6. The project was eventually released in Early Access in May 2024 before leaving the alpha scheme in September 2025.
Since release, Hades 2 has been rated as the top PC game of 2025 on Metacritic, beating competition from the likes of Hollow Knight: Silksong and Clair Obscur: Expedition 2. The game hit a peak of 112,947 concurrent players on Steam, according to SteamDB data. Hades 2 also walked away with the Best Action Game prize from The Game Awards 2025.
The original Hades was released in December 2020 following 22 months in Early Access. The title has sold north of 1 million copies and was the first video game to win a Hugo Award in 2021.
