1st June 2014, 5:30 AM
A lot of developers use it for a lot of reasons. inXile is currently using it to gain feedback for Wasteland 2, Double Fine used it to gain additional funding for Part 2 of Broken Age. It's a way to put an in-development game in people's hands, sometimes it doesn't work out, though, but I can only think of one major Early Access game that actually crashed before being completely finished. It happens, and that's why you don't throw your money at a game without looking into it a little and deciding that you're willing to lose that money to support an interesting game that might not ever be fully completed. I view Kickstarter the same way: don't spend your money if you aren't willing to lose it. Although in the case of Early Access you still get something to play right away.
Sometimes you get the scorpion.