Allow me to add some color from an infrastructure engineer's perspective. Early access is essentially a staggered start condition for rolling out the games infrastructure.  It gives the back-end team invaluable metrics about how the anticipate and prepare for the 'launch' and scale as well as  how their tech will perform under load. I agree with your that the marketing and presales nonsense around this 'feature' is poisonous to the industry, but I see some legit upsides to the practice.