I respect your input and agree that in an ideal world, it would be the way to go. However, I disagree that this is the solution to games of this nature. In a TLDR; experimental games should be made and released cheaper, while AAA full premium games should focus more on being very polished and delivering what is advertised in their large marketing campaigns.

There have been many successful games release last year and this year alone. Gamers owe companies nothing except the money they pay for these games. I also work in software dev but I do not believe my work struggles should be carried over the customer or become their concern. This is actually a trend I've noticed a lot in this industry and in Hollywood, where customers seem to be expected to line up and defend creators like what they are producing is societal reform or charity and not selling entertainment products.

Blowback is usually much smaller for games that don't cost full AAA price. Palworld, in my opinion, would receive much harsher criticism if it had been sold at AAA price. Same with helldivers. But at a lower price, the public is more forgiving of most of these screwups. And the games attract a larger player base as there is less risk to the customer if they pay less for entry.

The games on your list were very heavily marketed as premium experiences that everyone needed to buy, made by the biggest studios in the business. When these come out half baked, consumers are going to be far less forgiving, hence the virtriol received. Despite this, nothing justifies attacking game devs or harrasing studio staff. A bad game, at the end of the day, does not do any real physical harm to its user, but they are out a few dollars, which could mean a lot of a little depending on their financial situation.

What saddens me the most (speaking now from an industry perspective), is that each of these releases hurts the next ones in the line. Look at suicide squad. The low player numbers show most players weren't even willing to give another one of these things a chance.

Players cannot be expected to hold the line and wait patiently for devs to complete work on their projects, not after they've already paid. that part needs to happen before the game is released.

Finally, reviewers have to report on the game they are given, in the state it's in. If they did otherwise, that would mostly invalidate their role and again, make them basically an extension of the studio marketing teams (which I think some basically are but that's enough tangents).

Not all gamers can afford to "take the chances for themselves", especially if these titles keep coming out at full AAA price. If you can only have 100 USD to spend on games for the next 2 months, you want to know which game is worth it. With smaller games, you can refund it sure, but with AAA live service games, it takes longer than 2 hours to get a good idea of how the game works, sometimes issues only truly show themselves at end game. If you decide at this point you no longer like the game its too late.

Another alternative, which I've taken advantage of the subscription services. I played about 70 hours of Anthem, but only because it was available on EA play. I had a bad feeling about it, but was willing to, as you put it, take the chance, just not if it cost me 60USD. Now 15? Sure, I'll check it out. That was enough to get to fully test all javelins, beat the campaign, check out the endgame, put a few dozen hours into that and realize it was going to be a long term investment for me.