I disagree. Paying for "potential" is like ordering a burger and being served the ingredients. The games industry is the only (entertainment) one in which authors can get away with selling "potential". Bugs and issues are a reality of software development, no game will ever be 100% bug-free. I (and most people into games, I'd wager) understand that. But I think it's far healthier in the long run for the consumer to demand a high-quality, polished experience from the get-go, regardless of who's selling it. Don't mantain a standard for Blizzard and other for Tripwire (for example). That way, standards in general keep on rising, and sloppy developers are not given any quarter.
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Games I paid for based on potential alone despite most of the content not being finished:
Mount & Blade - Bought into around beta 0.7xx. Only two factions, most of the towns weren't modeled, balance was ****ed (anyone remember the Black Khergits?), and the game crashed every few hours. It's also the best RPG I've played in the last 5 years.
Lugaru/Overgrowth - Bought and enjoyed Lugaru (after it was done), picked up Overgrowth based on potential. One of the most interesting and fluid hand-to-hand combat systems I've ever seen. Very impressive work for such a small company.
Minecraft - Bought it back when survival mode didn't even exist, hitting the wrong block caused the entire map to flood, and crafting was still in the works.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I'd -much- rather pay a developer to finish an interesting idea and fun gameplay mechanics than for a polished work that is -technically- correct but doesn't have a single new or interesting idea in it's entire execution.
'life cycle'? Games make 90%+ of their profit in the two weeks after release. It would make much more sense for them to pull out. It wont make a difference as they can still have sales for it.
Because they're disposable piles of uninteresting slime that sell based on hype and marketing that the developers abandon as soon as they can justify it to move on and re-release it with a new level pack and some new weapons the next year. That's not TWI's business model. TWI makes most of it's profit -well- after release, as sales and free weekends draw in a lot of customers that have never heard of the game before, or who wouldn't pay full price to try out a small indie title.
It doesn't make sense for TWI to pull out. It's their meal ticket. They aren't a big 200+ person developer who can crank out a new title every 18 months. It's taken them 6 years to get RO2 to the state it's in RIGHT NOW. If they abandon it and try to move on to their next work, they're going to run out of money pretty fast.
They -had- to release RO2. It's been in development hell for the last 6 years, and they can only milk RO1 and KF so much. So, despite most of the content being missing, they had to deliver something to their customers. It is an unfinished work, but like the developers I listed above, they're going to keep polishing it up until it's got a mirror shine. As it gets more and more polish, more and more people are going to be drawn to it, or come back from other, less interesting titles and the community will rebuild itself. It's -exactly- what happened with RO1, it's -exactly- what happened with KF. Buggy, crappy launches followed by years of diligent polish based on community input and a strong sense of customer loyalty (that has apparently flown out the window) that has produced some of the finest niche games of our time. Why would RO2 be any different? A marginally bigger budget? A miniscule advertising campaign (as opposed to the non-existant ones for RO1 and KF?). The fact that they're trying to put on big-boy pants and take on the heavy hitters despite the fact that they're still a tiny indie?
Really interesting. While RO2 was a bigger 'success' the game will most likely be dead in a few months.
Using this as a tl;dr for the above textwalls:
RO2 is not going to die because TWI can't AFFORD for it to die. This is the same business model they've been using since they started SELLING their work. Why is this so surprising to people?
I hardly consider myself an RO vet, but the reason I didn't get into it until late in it's life cycle was because I heard from a -lot- of people that it was a buggy, crappy mess when it was released, and I ignored it. I later bought it because:
a) It was on sale
b) The same people that panned it as a buggy, crappy mess a year or two earlier started ranting about how it was a really deep, interesting, immersive shooter that was leagues better than anything else out there.
From my experience, this is nothing new for TWI, and I intend to stick by RO2 until it reaches the level of polish it deserves.
