It's a stuffty move to force people to pre-order the game to test the beta.
While i can see your point, i also got to say that free beta tests and the like can have the potential to lower the amount of sales because people already played the game enough with the beta.
I heard this a lot around the Division beta.
Then again, that is also a sign that the game is not interesting enough if it only interest people during the beta but not for the full game.
So eh, i can see both sides of the argument really.