The point of Early access is generally twofold: First, development teams get the ability to beta test their unfinished product for free. Second, studios who otherwise wouldn’t have the funding to finish their product get a chance to receive additional revenues before releasing their title, thus providing a greater product overall.
Hades II has gone live as an early access title, and given the overwhelming success of the original Hades, the only reason that can be inferred from the two listed above is that Supergiant Games is trying to gain some insight into how their sequel to the ever-successful Hades is coming along.
That begs the question: what is early access even for, now? If titles that definitely have the budget for a full development cycle are going into early access despite their funding, is it really early access, or is it just the first official release phase of a game that doesn’t want to admit that it isn’t the best shape it could be?
The only aspect of early access that Supergiant Games can cling to as viable reason for use is the fact that it provides them with data for bug fixing. The problem with this is understanding that they don’t want to release a version of the game that might cause fans to doubt the quality of what will be the finished product. In short, they are releasing a version of the game that is close enough to fully completed that fans are less likely to complain due to shoddy quality while also being far enough away from a final stage of true development to warrant an early introduction for funds.
This is fine, structurally speaking, but doesn’t mesh very cleanly with the traditional understanding of what it means to be an early access title. As established, the purpose of early access, originally, was to provide an opportunity for developers to gain extra funding and bug fix prior to official release.
TLDR; In the world of early access releases, there are two main functions: funding and bug fixing. Without the need for extra funding, all that’s left is bug fixing, which means that for a game like Hades II, early access feels less like early access and more like an official release with rather large gaps in content missing. (So far, reviewers are loving it.)