Wow, he really is defending selling unfinished games...
I'll defend selling unfinished games.
Keep in mind you're hanging out on a forum dedicated to the ultimate early access project. Toady's been making a living off an unfinished product for many years. It's kind of ironic to complain about early access here.
As mentioned, game development is a major investment. A team can either fit the project into their free time over a fuckhuge period on their personally funded equipment, and honestly most such projects will die before anyone sees anything, finished or not. Or they can offer early access to sustain more focused development and ride that out as long as they can. Don't assume these are people who are just trying to cheat you out of money by half-assing and then abandoning an effort at something. May be the case sometimes, but I'm sure it isn't always.
I don't mind early access offerings. If it's more than a few $, I'll put research into the game before I buy it. How excited am I by the concept? What's the current state and pace of development? How involved are the devs with their community and its feedback? If I fail to ask these questions first, it was my own fault. I've enjoyed many unfinished games, and I like that there are easy ways now to get something in return while directly investing in expanding game development beyond established, successful studios. I'm pretty sure the early access route churns out many more seasoned developers than unfunded basement projects that never see the light of day.
If you just can't shake the sense of entitlement that every time you ever spend money it should be like buying off a shelf in a retail store, then just stay away from early access. And blame capitalism for its absurd incentives that forces people to choose between pursuing a goal through less than ideal methods that might piss some people off or not pursuing it at all.