The problem falls on both sides.
No, because the publisher is the one who makes
their problem, the end-user's problem.
If you’re providing money for something, you’ll need to get returns at a point. Devs commit to delivering a product at a particular time, with a particular quality treshold.
You can’t keep blaming the people who pay for everything when the guys crunching the actual work aren’t able to put in stuff that’s standard fare at this point.
They are paying for milestones across years of development, if there are intrinsic problems they should be able to see them coming miles off from release and adjust accordingly.
Not to mention that its not unusual for the original creative to constantly revised in accordance with publisher edicts based on their vision for what is marketable and profitable. The reason why "hands off" publishing is generally seen as preferable because if the publisher (typically represented by an external or executive producer put in place to hole the creative vision) starts flip-flopping and adding items to the schedule, it can and often does go badly.
Especially when the project has already had a year long delay.
If they spent that year continuing to publicly hype the product despite knowing that development was going badly, how is this excusable?
Blaming publishers is the popular thing, but as we’ve seen with the Scalebound case, it isn’t always correct.
I'm betting you don't know anything about the specifics of what happened with Scalebound, and certainly not both sides of the story, so please.
Blaming publishers is ALWAYS appropriate because they have perverse incentives (insofar as they can -and do- make a determination to cut their losses at all points from inception to publication) and are the ones with executive control.
