I never pre-order nor pay for early access. Examples are plenty, but a couple that spring to mind are New World and Ashes of Creation. (Even excluding the infinite early access of PUBG, and whatever the hell Star Citizen is).

For the former, their “beta test” was “yeah, it runs: ship it” and ZERO feedback was noted or actioned. The release day was The Single Worst game release I’ve ever seen, and 4 years later when Amazon decided to kill it, ALL of the beta bugs were still there. To be fair, it was a “pay once” game. With MTX, of course.

For the latter, people started by paying $300+ for “alpha access” and more recently $100 for the same thing. And it’s clearly 2-4 years away from being remotely ready for release. Those people are paying to do QA. And it will be pay-per-month on release, as if it was 2010.

If your FOMO overrides your other faculties, and you’re willing to put up with all of that, then fine. You do you. 👍🏻

Me? I’m done playing these financial games with video games. Until a game is released/GA, it’s vapourware and non-existent. But again: you do you.