Yes. An early access is meant not to be a release version so everyone can wait for a 1.0 release if they want. NMS released as a 1.0 release, except that it was more of an overpromised 0.1 release. Sean Murray straight up lied to people about the game.

Games like Project Zomboid, which I play & follow for almost 14 years now, have never claimed to be finished during all their time, or promised features that weren't there.

Guess which title I still regret buying? I hope they really learned their lesson with this one and don't make the same mistake with their other title. Otherwise Murray will become the next Molyneux. Or worse, I hope they don't learned that they can release a purposefully incomplete game by withholding features and content, adding simple easy to fix bugs, just to add & fix all that over the following months & years to be seen as game dev heroes. That'd be a terrifying new business model.

Yes obviously. One is completely transparent about being incomplete, often discounted. The other is deceitful and lying about incomplete and charging you full price.

Same thing.