To protect themselves and Volition... Well there's no way to know if this was actually their intention from the start. But seeing how the game bombed, I'm just glad they took EPIC's deal. If they hadn't took the deal, V would be living on borrowed time right now.
Totally didn't think of that. Yeah I'm glad now that we're in this situation where they did release on there for the sake of the money to hopefully keep themselves going!
After seeing Cyberpunk comparisons again too (I played 100+ hours from release on PC when things were at their worst point) : that could be a good game for these devs to look at when it comes to how they dealt with one of the biggest hordes off pissed of fans ever and also sorting through tons of bugs over the course of the last couple of years, along with making changes to cop AI, skills/perks, adding apartments, changing how cars handled, etc. And also just trying to work past so many people that had totally written the game off as a complete failure and mess.
Maybe the way forward here could be best made by trying to make some balance between what they originally wanted to do if the game had gone completely fine and what a lot of the older unhappy fans are saying the game is lacking. Obviously there's tons of animosity from some of the original fans of the game and some will never accept that it's changed, but if Volition could put aside as much of that as possible and try to look at what so many older fans are missing from story, characters and general feel of the game maybe they can make a sequel to this reboot (and maybe some improvements/changes to this game) that work way better for everyone.
There's never going to be the resources and workers available here like there is at a place like CDPR, at the same time though Cyberpunk is a bigger and more complex game that really pushed older consoles to the limit and needed a lot more work doing to it. They seem to have listened to the fans to some extent though, worked hard and stuck at the game (loads done before any expansion has even been released.)
If that can be done here to some extent and the people that are generally ok with the game and those that are older fans that aren't can both be made happier at the way the game is patched/improved then it could offer a good way forward for any future content still being worked on and any potential sequel.
I definitely think it could be best to accept that yes, there's a big difference in outlook and intentions now for Saints Row between many older fans and the current devs, but that doesn't have to stay as some major divide. It can be worked on and Saints Row can be a lot better off in the future if that happens.