So this is absolutely my "words should mean things" pet peeve acting up and I know it's an unpopular opinion, but...
The Day Before came out and four days later the developer announced they were shutting their doors. That sucks for pretty much everyone involved - developers laid off before Christmas, a live service game people bought in early access hoping it'd get better will now sit abandoned,
And everyone, everywhere, seems to be hellbent on using the word "scam" to describe this scenario. And I just... can't get on with that?
The nuance matters because calling any failed game launch a scam has a chilling effect on the ability to launch games at all.
With the exception of the volunteer labor bit1, everything else about this launch, collapse, and refund campaign indistinguishable from a failed game launch by an incompetent studio. @Campster already explains this well.
But when the difference is negligible, and we start calling every failed launch a scam, that bumps up the risk factor for even trying to make a game in the first place. Why should I bother making an experimental game that I'm not sure will resonate if failure means I'm basically a criminal in the eyes of Gamers?
Big corporate game devs can handle the heat, or they can afford the monetary loss of cancelling the entire project. But smaller studios, which already routinely go out of business even when their game is mildly successful, can't.
If you at all care about the ability for people besides entrenched dev studios to be able to release games, you should be careful about exactly what you're accusing failed games of. The ability to fail without ruining your reputation forever is a requirement for growth in any ecosystem.
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Which is particularly awful and deserves attention, but does not materially change my point.