It doesn't ignore it, it's just a completely different issue. General awfulness of a game on a tight budget and deadline has little to do with backend scalability issues on large budget games...
The issue Augustine raises is why games have launch problems. He pins the blame on backend issues and ignores other issues. (I think primarily he was just using failed launches as a vehicle to talk about gaming backends, but nonetheless he argued that backends were the primary cause of failed launches.)
Another issue the article failed to address is that many games fail catastrophically when servers cannot be contacted even for online features that are not necessary for core gameplay; or for DRM purposes. This is a flaw in the front end that contributes to the same problem.
All those "causes" are primarily fueled by the following:
"It's a major threat to their business. So why does it keep happening?"
This here should have clued him into the larger context. It isn't a major threat to their business. Getting a refund on a videogame is becoming easier, but has historically been difficult. Try returning an opened copy of a game to any retailer. Even explaining that it is the game itself that is broken does not always result in an accepted return.
The consumer, rather than the business, is bearing the cost of a failed launch.
So Augustine is correct in a technical sense regarding how backend issues contribute to failed launches. However, it is the market as a whole that is the primary driver behind failed launches. There is little incentive to fix the failed launches regardless of the technical means by which they occur.
It pretty much does ignore it, pinning backend service issues as at least the primary if not the only major issue:
"So why does it keep happening? It comes down to the fact that most games are now online services, with updated content, special events, virtual economies, player interaction, etc"
As someone who plays both online and offline AAA games on console (PS4, Xbox One) and PC, I haven't seen any evidence that online-heavy games are more likely to ship with major problems than offline games.
For both types of games it is routine these days to get games on day one where you have the base game, you have the near obligatory multiple-gigabyte 0 day patch applied to deal with problems found between gold master and actual release, and then you still have obvious crash bugs, serious problems with animation systems, physics systems, etc. Connection issues with backend services are just one of a very long list of game breaking problems, many of which are seen in totally offline single-player games.
The whole "preorder" culture for gaming is a large factor in this problem, IMO. There's not that much incentive to ship a product that is solid when you've already gotten a large amount of the money you will get on release before the product even ships. This is even more evident in all the failed kickstarters where people have paid for alpha-level games that were never released or evolved much past where they were at the time of fund raising.
To a large degree the gamers are thus to blame for perpetuating this problem due to buying into the preorder culture (presumably in order to avoid loss aversion due to missing out on preorder bonuses).
Another issue the article failed to address is that many games fail catastrophically when servers cannot be contacted even for online features that are not necessary for core gameplay; or for DRM purposes. This is a flaw in the front end that contributes to the same problem.
All those "causes" are primarily fueled by the following:
"It's a major threat to their business. So why does it keep happening?"
This here should have clued him into the larger context. It isn't a major threat to their business. Getting a refund on a videogame is becoming easier, but has historically been difficult. Try returning an opened copy of a game to any retailer. Even explaining that it is the game itself that is broken does not always result in an accepted return.
The consumer, rather than the business, is bearing the cost of a failed launch.
So Augustine is correct in a technical sense regarding how backend issues contribute to failed launches. However, it is the market as a whole that is the primary driver behind failed launches. There is little incentive to fix the failed launches regardless of the technical means by which they occur.