He explains that there are some guidelines on online stores like steam and EVs that they cannot just talk about that requires them to do it now, even though they feel the price point is better represented by the final release. So they wished they could do it then, but this is an issue.

The team has had a split dev track the past 2 years, where one part developed the 1.0 stuff that will be added and was kept secret, while the second team did the early access part.

After the last major release they found that they now needed to merge the 2 branches and stop EA updates to work towards final release.

So there areany changes coming to what we saw in EA and there is also new content coming that we so far only saw parts of (like the summer sloop and mercer spheres).

These guys are like the gold standard for keeping their fans in the loop and explaining their dev proces. The hate is unwarranted. They even put the game on sale at the old price point and gave everyone fair warning. I think 40 euros is a good and fair price for the final game if you want to wait.