To follow up to Havenstone, if you say “I did a beta!” but you mean, “my three best friends and my mom played it and they all told me it was awesome!” that doesn’t mean it was given a beta test. We want to see the community given a real opportunity to engage an author in a dialogue.
In particular, when we at Hosted Games are trying to decide if we should expend money/capital on a game (putting it on Steam, putting it in a mailer, tweeting about it), Rachel gives her input, and then we look at the beta thread to see how the community has responded. Thus, whether the game is freely accessible or not, letting us see the feedback of the beta testers helps us decide how we market it.