This is the truth. The way our market defines success doesn't mean that thats what success is. Sure, you can abuse it and sell your product even if it's bad, but look where that has taken the world.
It's really not as you say in practice. Semantically yes it never becomes released, but eventually excellent work spreads naturally.
In the current internet setup it is hard to grow organically, but that's a result of this same mentality. It reinforces politics and showmanship, which is why those skills dictate the market and coincidentally the internet.
It's more likely that the technical crowd won't follow the leaders who get technical implementations wrong. Instead you will see natural leadership like in the early days of the internet.