I don't have a problem when small studios do it for games like Terraria and No Man's Sky. It keeps them solvent without having to attach themselves to a big publisher.

I do have a problem when a giant, established company does it, as is the case for Cyberpunk 2077.

There's also a recent trend of "forever games", where it's clear that the goal is to keep you playing it perpetually. It has both upsides and downsides. These games tend to change intensely over the years. Minecraft is such an example.

Cyberpunk and NMS did exceptionally decent first day numbers......and then they didn't do exceptionally decent numbers due to the well-deserved backlash. They would have sold even more copies over the last 5 years if they didn't scare half of the gaming industry away initially. You have to work really damn hard to save your game from death. Case in point: Bethesda isn't working to save Redfall and it shows.

Whenever I hear this quote I also think of the developers/publishers. They need to have a good reputation so people buy their games.

I think that's why EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft, Activision, etc sales have gone down. I will not say that gamers react fairly when it comes to unfinished game releases, but it takes one bad game to ruin a developer. Especially when you consider how small the margins are or if they are publicly traded. Even developers with good games have recently been going out of business because it's not sustainable.

I also think of their legacies. Especially in a post-steam world, a game with a good legacy will continue to sell for much longer. I don't think a game like Watch Dogs ever got rid of the stink surrounding it, even though it isn't a bad game to go back to nowadays.