People put up with Bethesda for a long time because they provided real gameplay value in the long run

Yeah through other people's free work being put into fixing their broken buggy games. Anyone whose tried playing through a vanilla Bethesda game knows that there is a near 100% chance at least a handful of quests will be completely inaccessible because the game just broke and is unfixable. God help you if you aren't on PC with console commands to just break the game back into place.

The fact that people defended their games at any point past like 2010 is proof that there are no "principles" this consumer base. Its just outrage bait when the correct Eceleb says to be angry and the game is bad, and then "but but but I love this game, so it gets a pass on everything" when it inevitably comes for yours.