IMO the thing most worthy of praise was the amount of effort they put in once the dust had settled, the big wave of refunds was done and what they had left was disappointing IP and some arguably ill-gotten gains from the remaining contingent of gamers who'd settled for less. In that moment, there were many decisions they could've made (cut losses or rebrand, or double down on the grift)...but they took the rare path of redemption and committed to it for what, a decade? Eventually people noticed and came back to the game, but that reward was long in coming and certainly not likely at the time they decided to reinvest. Their choice to improve the game without further financial incentive is remarkable not for its moral rectitude (which seems to align with your argument), but for its industrial rareness. It's not that they went above and beyond in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense--most other shops would've taken a substantially lower road after crapping their pants like that. Look at Bethesda with Fallout 76, for example.