It's nice that SE has people like you to defend them. They can freely say that Early Access is "the retail product early", and then have people like you insist that it's another beta phase, effectively removing all of SE's responsibility for their errors.

If it's advertised as the retail product early, I expect the retail product. Early.

And to anyone complaining that their local game shop didn't have EA codes, unless you live in Antarctica you have no reason to complain.