Not even bad engineering, just version 1.0. 80% of the issue was the drivers, 20% could have been solved with hall effect sensors on the throttle and pedals and another half-inch of wire in the throttle wires, and hall sensors on all axis would have made it perfect. However they were slow to fix the initial driver problem, took a lot of flack on it, and dropped the product rather than deal.
There's a great market opportunity out there for an FFB startup.