Early Access CAN be a good idea, but as your example showed it can also be like KickStarter Projects that are just in it for the money and nothing else. Good thing I didn't buy this pitiful excuse of a game in its current state. There are other early access games that ARE in fact good, just don't use this one as the basis for EVERY Early Access game because SOME do end up being good projects that are complete. A lot of the games in this are also mainly Indie Developers who don't really have a huge amount of resources like EA and Activision have. I have played a few early access games that are in fact GOOD. This review...I find helpful and the other reviews that iron out the points of not living up to their promises.

Assetto Corsa, is a game that was solid from the get-go, sure, ran into some bugs in development.... Improved a lot since first alpha, but EVEN their tech demo was already more solid than this game is on release...
Prison Architect, was buggy, but has a dev team that are open to ideas and usualy answer posts within a couple of hours. And are still improving every day!
Rust didn't quite make a solid appearance. But the devs kept on updating the game engine till they got it right!
This is a "game" where the devs never answer questions they don't like or don't want to deal with and never actually delivered. I think steam should have a say in releases and they should have called this one NOT release ready.. send them (devs) back to the drawing board and make them work some more for their money. Because they didn't earn it yet! They never put in the work, they are not done!

The EA titles that were good were already pretty solid in ALPHA, sure some bugs but nothing really gamebreaking OR they had a dev team that listened to the community and actually fixed stuff, not just release it and be done with it.. This game had neither sadly (not a solid game nor devs that actually care). This game to me also feels like a cash grab. It really feels they were sick of coding and or fixing code, so they just released it...

Many early access games are great. Some are bad. If you are still interested in some form of sandbox game in early access that I feel has a lot of promise, you should take a look at Space Engineers. They have managed well at releasing helpful and productive updates regularly, and they make a point at looking at community requests for content ideas. As of right now, it still has a few things lacking, but it's obvious that the devs for Space Engineers intend to fix that. I'd recommend checking it out. And please, don't condemn all Early Access games because one sucked royally.

You should still give some early access games a chance. Project Zomboid, Prison Architect, etc. gave me hope after I bought Starforge right out the gate and have been disappointed for a year+ now.

an unfinished gmae for early access?? wooww, who wouldve thought...