PUBG released in early access on the Xbox One last week and the early impressions are pretty horrible. Glitches are rampant, frame rates are awful and a host of other things are going utterly wrong. Everyone from IGN to Reddit are criticizing both Bluehole, the creators of the game, and Microsoft, the publisher.

The thing is, PUBG on the Xbox One is an early access title, or Game Preview as Microsoft calls it. Whether or not early access should exist is a different argument altogether. The real question here is, how harshly should we judge early access games?

For years, the gaming community has been arguing that studios have been more and more often putting out unfinished and unpolished games masquerading as finished products. Now, Bluehole and Microsoft release a game and say clearly in its description, “[PUBG] is unfinished and work in progress, may change over time, and may not release as a final product,” and they get shit on relentlessly for it. 

Given this admission, should PUBG really be judged as harshly as it is? Granted, some sites like IGN do make it clear in their reviews that they are reviewing an Early Access title, but in the end, they still score the game. Then sites like Reddit cling onto that and report that “IGN Gives PUBG On Xbox One a 5/10.” Thousands of people read the headline and nothing else, and the criticism grows.

It’s a viscous cycle and frankly, a dangerous one.

Then there’s sites like Forbes, who just published a post today that severely criticized PUBG on the Xbox One, but failed almost entirely to mention the fact that its an early access game. This kind of reckless and incomplete reporting is absolutely the wrong way to report on an early access title.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be critical of early access titles, its just that the criticism needs to be constructive and understanding of the game’s status. 

Wouldn’t it just be better if every game released was polished and perfect from day one? Of course, but that’s just not the world we live in. 

In a world with early access titles and game previews, expectations need to be tempered and reporting needs to be considerate. Saying that PUBG sucks isn’t helpful. If you want it to be perfect, wait until the final version is complete and play it then. If you want to play the game now, be patient, report the bugs as you come across them and have a little faith that the game will improve substantially with every update. In an early access world, that’s the best we can do.