Not enjoying the game is a fair criticism. It is slow paced and there is no pvp off switch, only things you can do to minimize risk by learning best practices. It's not for everyone. It's going for a sci-fi second life vibe, it's not very gamey. I don't think everyone expects that. And the prototype criminality system is rather useless right now, you're right, so you get griefers and undeserved fines here and there. I can still have a lot of fun despite these things, but I can totally see it being not worth everyone's time, especially for the lesser flushed out jobs. I have had my share of bug induced rage quits.

But yeah, they are making a huge game in good faith, any claim of it being a scam is childish. Any claim that it's not fun is a valid opinion if they've actually tried it.

They know whale hunting is paying for the game, without them it'd be a tiny, indy, space game we'd have all forgotten about by now like they thought they'd make back in the original in Kickstarter. Some people have better stuff than me because they earned it, some just bought it, but it's more RPG than competitive shooter and the in-game progression is fair so far so it hasn't been world breaking yet, plus it ads a lot of diversity and multicrew options right out the gates. So it's not great, but it's less shady than premium currencies, battle passes, or loot boxes to me.