WWE 2K25's advanced access shows players should be wary of the trend
Players are having issues with WWE 2K25, which is in its week-long Advanced Access period. Some players worry they are glorified beta testers.
Over the weekend, many players who bought into WWE 2K25’s Advanced Access period jumped into the game. The game is released for everyone on March 14th, but players who purchased the Deadman or Bloodline editions were able to jump in on Friday through Advanced Access. This latest edition in the franchise allows players to upload images or use face scan in the character creator, as well as a new feature called the Island that some players have been excited to explore. Unfortunately, the advanced access launch has not been smooth sailing for everyone.
WWE 2K25’s advanced access period serves as a warning to future games
WWE 2K25 has already had several patches to address issues, with Patch 1.04 arriving just twenty hours ago. Thanks to a post from content creator SmackTalks, which was reposted by the official WWE 2K25 page, we have a breakdown of the patch notes, which is not the shortest list. Among the notes are expected inclusions like “stability and performance improvements” as well as attention to other larger issues, such as “reported concerns of the inability to launch MyRISE” which is the story-mode where players can follow the career of their customer character. This issue with MyRISE appears to be a major sticking point for players on social media, with several posts lodging complaints about the problems with this feature.
One social media post from @bye1252 puts it well, asking the team to get “on top of all these bugs/glitches” and explaining how important the character creation in MyRISE is to the game’s success. With previous games in the series, talented users would recreate celebrities and other characters using the WWE 2K25 character creator, which was able to build a thriving community around the game. The post concludes with “we shouldn’t be beta testers when paying top level prices.” Which is a great point, and a warning to other players across the industry who have thought about buying into the increasingly common Advanced Access periods for major games.
Advanced Access for a game like WWE 2K25 is slightly different from another common trend in gaming, Early Access on Steam. In Steam’s case, an “Early Access” game is unfinished in some way, but players can pay to play the game anyway. In the best of cases, like with Baldur’s Gate 3, which spent years in Early Access, the revenue from players can allow the developers to finish the game. In the worst of cases, it can be a way for developers to sell an unfinished product and never deliver the full game. Thankfully, Steam has recently introduced a feature to give players a warning if the developer has not updated their Early Access game in a while. This is not the same type of Early Access that WWE 2K25 is doing. Typically, players would never pay extra for Steam’s version of Early Access.
The Standard Edition of WWE 2K25 is $59.99 on Steam. This grants access to the game when it launches for everyone on March 14th. But rather than waiting another week, players could gain access immediately, or have already been playing for a few days, if they purchased other editions. The Deadman Edition costs $99.99, while the Bloodline Edition costs a whopping $129.99 (more than double the standard edition cost), according to Steam. This is not an unfinished version of the game; it’s paying a premium to be able to play ahead of other players. Or that’s what it’s supposed to be.
Plenty of other games have been doing the same thing. Avowed was a huge launch last month that gave four days of Advanced Access to players if they bought the Premium Edition. Future games like Doom: The Dark Ages are already allowing players to pre-order a premium edition that grants two days of Advanced Access before the standard edition launches. This is a trend that seems to be sticking around, and if players are worried about Grand Theft Auto 6 costing $100, it’s probably just going to be the premium edition for a few days of Advanced Access.
If that’s how players want to spend their money, that’s fine. But the way players have been reacting to WWE 2K25’s Advanced Access should serve as a warning to anyone else considering it for any game. As @bye1252 put it above, players shouldn’t be paying an extra $40 or $70 for Advanced Access to a game that isn’t fully working yet. It shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise that huge new games have launched with some problems that need to be fixed in the first few days. That’s an unfortunate trend that has become all too common over the last few years.
So, while that Advanced Access means you don’t have to wait as long to play that game you’re excited about, be wary of the risks involved. There’s no way to know if the game will function perfectly during that advanced period, and chances are generally high that there will be some issues that need to be patched out. Advanced Access is a gamble, you could get a great experience ahead of everyone else, or you could be a glorified beta tester. Don’t let the FoMO win.
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