So, when a game releases, buyers get the option to partially refund or commit, and valve uses the commit money to pay the refunds, so devs only make money if they keep more than half of their buyers, and customers have to consciously deal with sinking money into a potentially failed project.

At least right now the abandoned games are still labelled early access.

Most early access failures eventually just call themselves released at some point, so we’re no better off as far as that.