If anyone thought that what they put out was even remotly an alpha, then im sorry but thats on them.It looks like it met standard technical definitions of “alpha”. Other developers just abuse the term “alpha” and call their “pre-alphas” “alpha.” The phases locked down at least 7 weeks before launch - when the public tests started.
You dont have a game going in a playable "alpha" build only a few months before release, thats beta territory and even then.
All this was, was a very clever marketing tactic, to call it an alpha to dupe people.