And people stay productive by enjoying hobbies and playing games. It’s an investment in infrastructure, just like fire, healthcare, police, power, water, transportation, etc.

You can enjoy hobbies without paying for unfinished games, early access is completely besides the point here. You can buy games when those are ready and be equally productive. If you like early access games you're free to buy them, I have nothing against it. But it's not an 'investment'. It just a discount.

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago

There are thousands of great game that wouldn't have got off the ground without early access, so not participating could absolutely change the quality of the final product. In many ways, early access in one step removed from crowdsourcing, which is an investment in an idea.

Investments aren't necessarily about leveraging capital to generate more capital. It would be a very sad life to live where everything must be categorized by ROI.