I remember those days as having no Internet let alone high speed, I recall reading old ads for some PC games. So they don’t seem as great as you’re implying because at least the game will most likely be fixed with an accessible patch these days. You’d have to do a lot more work to get one before or completely wasted your money in rare cases.
Also usually publishers set the release date, though in this case I’m not sure if it was in house or not so may not be a point, though you called out developers so figured I’d add it in.