In the Linux community, at least unless a project has a toxic developer (there are a few), bug reports are Always Good. They're how we make the software WE use better on the systems that WE use it on. Even if a report isn't fully actionable (e.g. it's a problem with graphics drivers), the report is often helpful because the bug tracker is probably public and we can try to find workarounds, or at least flag the issue for others.
For closed source commercial software, especially cases where a tiny number of developers are working on the code, bug reports are Always Bad. They represent more work, work that you don't want to have to do, because at the end of the day these are people who already bought the game. You've gotten as much out of them as you're going to get out of them. If they're more trouble than they're worth (someone else in this thread claimed 90% of bug reports out of 1% of purchases), then it's obvious you should just ignore them or not port your game to their platform at all. You'd think this attitude would be different for issues that affect a lot of people: a good bug report can help you fix widespread problems that are hurting your players, but actually even this is rare. See the story of this guy fixing a bug causing 6 minute startup times that affected at least thousands of people using reverse engineering, when the developer ignored the problem for years: https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times...
So I think you're right, these are mostly people enthusiastic about a piece of computer software instinctively trying to collaboratively improve it for everyone. But because development is so limited (there's only one person reading bug reports and working on the code), those reports are experienced as frustrating rather than helpful. Worse still, because the software is commercial there may be an unspoken feeling that support is owed for the software because the user paid for it.
This is such a bad attitude. The game is supposed to work correctly without any bugs. People who paid money for the game deserve continued support. It doesn't matter how much time and money the developers have to spend, that's their problem.
If the software is defective, consumers should be entitled to a refund. That ought to motivate companies not to release shoddy work.
This is not real-world software engineering :)
Pretty much any software has bugs; maybe surprisingly to non-programmers, games are especially complex (in primis, architecturally).
In real world, one can realistically talk about, let's say, an acceptable threshold of bugs.
> People who paid money for the game deserve continued support
And this is not real-world (game) business. Whether one likes it or not, there is a per-unit profit, and the corresponding value in terms of support is very limited.
An ideal solution to this is open sourcing games after a certain time (Id Software used to do it), but this is not realistic. I wish it, though!
> That ought to motivate companies not to release shoddy work
One can't really force a company not to do shoddy work. The gaming market is a radically free one, unlike other constrained markets, like internet providers. Customers are actually entitled to have the money refunded, at least on Steam. Gaming journalism actually has been including bugginess in games evaluation for a while, so buyers can decide in an informed fashion.
Though for an indie game it probably isn't crazy to make the code open sourced and then put those users to work for you. That can really help reduce the burden. But of course opens you up for people stealing your software (which let's also be real, happens anyways).