With more games including early access as bonuses for purchasing the Deluxe Edition, it can be incredibly frustrating when this advanced release date seemingly just chooses not to work. In this case, time is literally money, and every minute you can’t play is money wasted.

This is unfortunately a risk regardless of the platform you play on, but Steam’s version of the game, aptly named Steam Advanced Access, seems to suffer from these issues more often than most. If you’ve been having trouble with your Advanced Access period for a game you’ve been really looking forward to, trying some of these troubleshooting tips should have you playing in no time.

Advanced Access in particular differs from Early Access, which allows players to support a game’s ongoing development. Now that we’ve made that important distinction, let’s look at the best ways to get around that Advanced Access barrier. There are a few methods at your disposal, including the following:

Steam doesn’t update the Advanced Access status in real-time. If you’ve exceeded the Advanced Access threshold (which varies by game) and Steam isn’t recognizing it, this is likely the culprit. You’ll want to close the Steam Client completely, making sure to close the app from the system tray and quit it using Task Manager if applicable. When you next open Steam, it should know what time it is and let you download or play the game depending on its pre-load status.