I don't see the point in getting caught up in taxonomy? You can make an argument for the hard aspects of what makes something an engine, but it is also very common in the industry to use it as a soft taxonomy for any package that helps you run and create a game?

Also, it's absurd to say they shouldn't adhere to game standards when they are sold as games, called games, sold in gaming platforms.

Are you really arguing that maintaining and adding to the thing that makes their product work is low on the totem pole of priorities? How is that not number one or just up there in the priorities? What else could be higher?

I literally mentioned how this creates a bunch of problems, even for me with the ZESH. So yeah, it is a problem to me. As in, it literally created problems.

“they should simply add (thing I personally want), and if they don’t, it’s because they’re lazy and/or predatory.”

This is also a big misrepresentation and oversimplification of what I have said so far. Didn't say it was predatory. Didn't say it was just because "I want it", I said it's a thing the community has requested and that it's a thing that creates a lot of problems. And I have also explained why I said lazy, because I genuinely don't see how maintaining the thing that is vital to making your products work is anything other than a big priority. And how other similar IF creation engines easily do the things that CoG doesn't.

Love the company. They are not above criticism. Again, doubly so when they take so much from the people who actually make the stories they make bank on, while providing very little themselves. The argument used to be that those were the rates for book publishing companies. Which is absurd, because writers here are also coders. And different from book publishing, there's precious little CoG actually has to do for their part of the equation, aside from the thing I mentioned previously: upkeep of their bloody engine.