I made no such claim. My claim is a simple one: there's plenty of content in the game to justify the 15-dollar pricetag. It may not be the flawless masterpiece some blindly hoped it to be, but it's a pretty decent game. Maybe a 7/10.
If you ask me to explain why a $15 game MUST have the following features to not count as a fuckup and a scam, and I respond with a really eloquent explanation of what made original X-COM so enjoyable, I'm fucking up the conversation. I cannot then claim that, completely lacking context, the response I gave was well-written and enjoyable and therefore a valid response, because it's not. It might be if I were in a discussion about X-COM, but we weren't so I'm going off about nothing in particular. I'm giving a shit response, even if somebody jumping into the thread without any context thinks it's a pretty thoughtful piece, or who enjoys the derail anyway.
Similarly, you cannot market a game as one thing, then deliver whatever else you feel like and count on it "still being a good game" to cover the discrepancy. There are no doubt people who would have bought or backed the game either way or any way, and so for them the question of "was this a good $15?" still has the same answer. This does not invalidate those for whom the answer has changed, or those for whom the answer
might have changed
because that's their call to make, not the company's. And since
everyone's answer
might have changed, everyone has a right to call Chucklefish out for lying about the product they were selling.
You can personally decide that it all worked out okay for you personally, so no harm no foul, but that doesn't oblige anyone else to do the same.
If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna say it's the relevance of most of what you mentioned that is debatable: yeah, because I can't be arsed to do the research and investigate just what went supposedly wrong and verify whether or not Chucklefish is in fact the herald of the Apocalypse. Internal politics, blunders, who had a falling out with whom and whatever happened along the development process is irrelevant if said process kept chugging along. How they managed their official forums matters little. All that matters is the quality of the final product, from a customer's perspective.
You really have to ask yourself what'd you think of the game if you hadn't immersed yourself in all the rumours, gossip and forum raging, all of which has little bearing on the actual product. From a personal perspective, I believe it paid off to just forget about the game after it first came out and the forum rage and alleged questionable happenings took place. I was able to play subsequent stable versions, as sparsely as they were released, as an outsider, and found them to be decent upgrades. What the devs did or did not do with their company was of little consequence. Your experience might've been different: everyone has different expectations and preferences about any game, but that's normal.
So you have no idea what was or wasn't promised, but clearly anyone expecting anything but what they got was a gullible rube demanding the impossible? And you have no idea what Chucklefish did or didn't do, but anyone disliking or objecting to any of it is just being petty and irrelevant?
The mechanics of the company are incredibly relevant to the game, which is incredibly relevant to your status as a (potential) customer. If you want to just shrug and say "I'll be happy with anything!" then I guess it really doesn't matter for you personally, but that doesn't mean it's immaterial for everyone else.
And yeah, I'm also interested in a list of all the alleged promised features that didn't make it. So far all the responses I've gotten are something along the lines of "Chucklefish did this or that and they're the devil" and "they haven't fulfilled any of the million promises they made, and they deleted those (so I don't even know what I'm expecting they'll own up to)". I'm astounded by the amount of bile surrounding what's merely a game, often spewed by people who paid for it years ago, got dozens of hours of entertainment from it and still demand it to fulfill their mythical expectations.
So what, there's no such thing as a false promise so long as they remember to delete it at some point? Or are you suggesting that everyone who brings up those features is a liar or misremembering a suggestion thread?