[Scarlett.]

I just found this on reddit

Consider that an amusement park is being built in your town.

Before they even begin construction, they want to sell you "premium" access so that you can get on the rides long before anyone else. A few people buy this, and the amusement park sees it as a revenue stream.

The park begins to be built. They put up some fences, but it seems they put most of their energy into the ticket booths rather than the rides. They assure everyone the rides are coming later, but to celebrate the ticket booth completion they're offering a special sale on Amuseopark Bucks that you can spend in the park when the rides are available. Some people buy some Amuseopark Bucks, as they figure that they will be spending a lot of time at the amusement park when it opens.

The park later puts in a few rides, perhaps 5% as many as the park is planned to eventually have. They offer those who paid for the special early access pass the chance to test out those rides. Any comments of "This ride is great" or "This ride looks like it will be fun" get publicity, but any complaints of "This ride doesn't work" or "This ride killed my whole family and left me disfigured" are dismissed as problems that "will be fixed by the time the park is opened for real."

Over time the amusement park is still selling Amuseopark Bucks and early access passes, but isn't putting any more work into the rides. This is because those who invested in the park (The "real" investors, not the customers) want to see a return on their money as early as possible. Thus the park is taking all of the money from the Amuseopark Buck sand early access passes and reporting it as profits to be divided among the investors.

Eventually the sales of Amuseopark Bucks and early access passes starts to fall to where they're no longer making an annual profit, so they declare the park "OPEN FOR BUSINESS!" A few people buy the normal passes, but quickly reports of how terrible the park is spread and nobody is buying them. The park then starts selling super discount passes. The normal pass is $100, but they'll let you in today for just $1! Thousands of people buy the super discount pass, only to be immediately disappointed.

A month after it "Officially opens" the park closes, with everyone saying it was a terrible park and everyone who bought anything from it got suckered on false promises. However at the business meeting, the park performed amazingly. It was able to start showing a profit long before it opened, and maintained a profit up until the end when they closed it down. As a result, three new amusement parks are planned for the next year.

The tale of Early Access gaming reminds me of a movie, "The Producers." In this movie, a bunch of stage producers have an idea for how to make a ton of money: they sell a 20% share in the profits to hundreds of people for a fixed amount of money, and thus all they have to do to make a ton of money is ensure that the production flops so hard that it has zero profits. The same theory can apply to early access games: If they're able to make a profit before delivering on the features they promised, there's no incentive to deliver on those features.

Business Standpoint: "Why develop a complete amusement park for a regular income for thirty years when we can make a profit off of just pictures of the rides for a few years and then repeat the process?"

I agree, far too many early access games these days are cash cows.