Thus your claim that early access games cannot be expected to, as a matter of policy, not delete your save files every single update. Is the height of sophistry. As 99.66% of games do not do it.
Note that the 1.24% of games that have frequent enough save breaking that I complain differ in that they at least make the attempt to import your save between versions. And often even do so successfully. They just have a failure rate high enough to have bothered me in their attempt at importing old saves.
Thank you for your research. Interesting - it appears in your experience of your hand-chosen titles, even though not supplying your list of 289 games researched, that over 99% of your list don't have continuous problems with saves not being compatible over updates.
It is interesting to note that Steam actually makes a point of telling developers to be upfront about expectations during early access offerings on their site, including: "if you know your updates during Early Access will break save files, make sure you tell players up front."
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And it appears to be source of conversation between players over there, as well - including the mentioning of finished games which have save compatibility issues after patches, etc (
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).
That stated, I never said that "early access games cannot be expected to, as a matter of policy, not delete your save files every single update."
I stated "this is a product in development and no one can expect a project in development to work as it will be intended in its final iteration. This includes bugs, saves which may not be compatible, as well as other situations which may arise in a product that is not completed. You get the opportunity to play it while it is in development. You can choose to wait until it is completed. You choose not to. Any experiences you have with the product prior to completion are because of your choice."