about 3 years ago - rocket2guns - Direct link
I can certainly understand the frustration.

From a development perspective they have been very useful, because:

1. It reduces the "beta fatigue" of the players, but exposing small parts of the game instead of all of it at once - with each of the parts not having the benefit of time to address any faults.
2. Allow us to focus feedback into specific components in isolation, with time between to address that feedback before getting feedback on the next piece of the game.
3. Let us have focused development time without distractions, we're not "rushing to fix a bug" or trying to help customers out with the game and problems - we observe in the weekend and then have two weeks of focused work.