Sure, but I am referring to the common bugs encountered during normal gameplay. The ones that actually make people quit.
People quit for many reasons. Bugs do turn people off. Some gamebreaking bugs do affect the population like the old razorback fur crashes of beta.
That literally prevented people from playing the game. Or when lights for priest were removed (bug) which made noobs end up in bad situations, you could see the pop drop super hard.
But in my experience in playing beta/alpah/indie games. Bugs annoy people a lot but don't really make people quit if they have been playing for a while. bugs just hurt "immediate retention" as in people who only play for a day or two and do not understand the game at all yet.
SV needs to look at why a lot of their long term players keep falling off, which reasons have been given for the past 8 months as ignored feedback.
Project polish is just PR. and facts of this backed up by history of SV/Henrik would be denied only by the blind and ignorant.
PR that is merely a excuse to get subs into the game but Henrik doesnt understand the community or player or game so he will still lose players when subs come in after Project Polish.