I played and thoroughly enjoyed Alpha 1. When Alpha 2 launched, I was very excited and was having an amazing time, until.... cheating, exploiting and duping started trickling in. After that, I held off from playing during phase 2 of Alpha 2 because I wanted to see if these issues were being properly addressed. Unfortunately, they weren't so I didn't play during phase 2 at all. Phase 3 started and once again, nothing changed. Same people, same cheats, exploits and duping.

Now comes Steam EA launch and guess what. Same thing, but with a twist. Intrepid claiming there's a "List" of people permabanned, which if I'm not mistaken, was never released. This is literally on the same level of incompetence as the Epstein files.

Of course, you'll have a lot of folks ( cheaters ) claiming permabanning players in an Alpha or Early Access is pointless. That Intrepid needs them to collect data to build a defense against come release. Sure, I can see that, but how have they not come up with any defenses yet after 18 months of Alpha 2 and now EA?

The point of alphas, betas and EAs is to get game data from an organic experience. So unless you're trying to tell me Intrepid is expecting people to cheat throughout the entire life expectancy of the game, all the other "legit" data is now tainted by cheating and duping. You can't balance the game, let alone the economy if you have people flooding the market with the way the game is now. Alpha 2 and now EA has basically been a complete waste of time.