We are talking about the scene in the early '80s.

Products were sold in shops and via mail and were advertised on magazines. Remote networking was on Bulletin Board Systems - and with limited diffusion. The hacker coding his¹ product probably did not easily have those things around.

¹(A 'his' that calls for a pluralized 'her', out of respect to a group that created a closed-doors women-only community in Ireland and produced "women-only" themed adventure games: they were in a way similar to a sect but sold their own software as part of the funding - I cannot remember names right now. I believe there exists a photo of a group of coders with two ladies dressed in Victorian costumes (which apparently were the uniform in said community), after a social gathering. This gives an idea of what could contribute to the scene.)