Myeah, I probably should've specified I meant what I said within the scope of "established business" developers.
No argument EA and its ilk was crucial in expanding market access to tiny developers, regardless of the frequent abuse of the process.
And yes, it would've been nice if our laws kept up with tech progress better. Wouldn't mind seeing legally binding obligations codified to require things like Steam's EA to either provide a decently developed result, or force developers that decide to drop the project to publish their code as open source.
I get that "decently developed result" is not exactly a legal term, and it would require a lot of thought and care to define what exactly it should be, but the threat (well... assuming it'd get actually enforced, not treated like, say, GDPR violations, heh) of open-sourcing a failed project alone should prevent at least the most glaring abuse of EA that all too often happens nowadays. Especially if there was also a codified way for customers who feel screwed over by whatever "final version" gets released (especially if the roadmap or prior advertisement of it was blatantly different) to have easier time at launching class action suit to force open-sourcing the code.
That way, even if the developer does a number on people who pay, the "community" itself can salvage some of it (if not actually finish the damn game in the first place). As things are right now, Steam sure loves to keep listing things that are daylight rip-offs. Even after the development studio ends up long dissolved, and even when there's no third-party publisher.
Blatant cash grab, but Holy GabeN something something.
