Okay, so maybe my experience is an exception to the rule, but Starbound's beta is literally unplayable for me. And I don't mean like, Sonic '06 type, "Wow this is really bad haha," I mean I cannot play it. Either it won't launch, it crashes on launch, or the display zooms in really far and I'm completely unable to see what I'm doing. So then I die and naturally the game crashes upon respawn.

Anyways, it's not like I expect the game to be perfect. I know full well what "beta" means. But like... the whole early access craze is getting ridiculous. I have played games that were still in a state of development, which were entirely playable at that point. "Beta" is not when you're working out the majority of crash issues and other ruinous sorts of bugs, it's where you're like: "Okay. This is mostly presentable, we're just ironing out kinks and balance issues and such."

And even then, just... I hate early access. Early access is developers free-sourcing their playtesting by dressing it up like it's some kind of privilege, like "Hey you get an early look at the game, look how awesome and special you are."

What it's really saying is "Here, play this buggy mess of a game for us and tell us what's wrong with it so we don't have to pay anybody to do that."

Anybody familiar with the whole parenting trick where it's like "No, these menial house chores are way too tough for you, only grown-ups can do this," and then after a while of this they "decide" to "LET" the kid do it? It's like that. It's just putting the consumers to work fixing and bugtesting the game before it's even fun to play by slapping some glitter on it and making it look like this awesome cool special thing to do."

I understand that it's not like I'm losing out on playing the finished product by not caring about the beta phase. It just makes me kinda crazy watching other people eat it up like it's the best thing since sliced bread that isn't sliced yet so you can slice it yourself you special little snowflake.