It would be nice if they had some responsibility, but they don’t have almost any. Read the licence… they sell you product as-is. It was playable so it can’t be considered as scam. You played the game for more than year, so it was playable. Even they don’t have to, they would probably return you money if you returned the game before year of usage, just to avoid going to court.
They held moral responsibility… which is name of their company. It is their consideration what they do… they made few people upset about the quality of game. Do you think people at Sony care about it? Probably not as the game made required income in the contract and then they don’t even remember there was such a game. Illfonic get some money and month after they released the game, they focused on another game. By now they are developing another game. I highly doubt they care much about long term quality as they focus on contracting with big names. It is important what is written in contract. If they fulfill it and generate expected income then they are perfect company to deal with. The players are just people who send them money, the end. As long there aren’t newspaper titles that they fucked up something really bad, then for companies like Sony they are perfect partner. In other words it is not their game… it is one of games they developed, get paid and move on, there are many more games awaiting to be written for big companies.
P:HG will never get any better, it is abandoned project for Illfonic. Only change of developer would make a change.