Okay, just hear me out.
My personal pet peeve of Early Access is that it's treated as a launch date while it's actually not. For instance, Diablo II Resurrected's open beta is now live, but the official launch date is Sept 22, which is the way things should be. But then we have games like Baldur's Gate III, Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness and King Arthur: A Knights tale where if you were to google up their release dates, you get their early access date, and then you have to do some research to find out whether it's a full release or an Early Access date.
My question is, when did it become okay to pass off the release date of a game still under testing as a release date? To me, an Early Access is essentially an Open Beta/Alpha - not going to argue semantics here, but it's a game with open testing. It's unfinished, and don't make it appear like there's a release date yet.
And if any of you wonder why this bothers me, I'll just use this analogy - Let's say you googled up the release date for a movie, and say the release is....20th December 2021. Come 19th December, you realize that the date is not a theatrical release. It's a screening date for the post production cut of the movie, where fans can participate and give feedback for which scenes they feel should be in the movie or not. Now, that's all fine and good, but don't pass off this date as if it's a release date, because it's not.
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