That's a bit harsh. Granted I bailed at the end because of exhaustion and I didn't reach the expected goals. And sure the company did some gestures over those 7 months that were in my favor. I totally understand the decision to withheld the money of the hours of work done those past couple of months since the project is not delivered (I would probably do the same myself). But you got to agree those hours of work deserves at least some credit.

It really depends what the initial agreement was. Were you a regular employee or was there an initial contract that you would complete X project for Y dollars by some deadline Z.

If it was the second one then IMO you really owe them back the initial deposit they gave you depending on what kind of final work you delivered to them. Honestly handing codebases from one developer to another is less than ideal and makes projects more expensive than they should be. Also I'm sure it was way past the expected deadline of the client.

If you delivered nothing in the end then it was really more like they hired a con artist that stole their money, again if you were under the kind of contract I stated above.

If you were a normal employee then you just didn't do a great job due to all the stuff you mentioned.

Either way I don't know why you would publicize a situation like this. It doesn't matter what way you look at it, this whole story doesn't make you sound like a developer that people would want to hire.

For some reason I can't reply to you directly...

If you left good deliverables for them in the end then that is better.

But like I said, I don't think it is a great idea to publicize this situation because it doesn't exactly make you look good, and the internet's memory is forever.

There was no deadline specified but multiple deadlines were delayed because of me but not only this was also a team and originally a contract to assist the development (sure it might imply finishing the project) with a fixed amount of money per day.

In contrary to what you say they have all my work on their servers and the thing is for sure usable so yeah the project might not be completed and I'm not the only developer working on it. So the work can be carried on and I'm ready to assist in passing and explaining my work to the other member of the team.

Again as explained I feel responsible for my failure(s) but I do not think this is all on me as you seem to believe.

Did you ask them that you planned to clean the code before hand? Take the case of the company: they must be thinking something like "this guy decides to clean the code and this delays the project for ages". If you are freelancing (I am not, so take this with a grain of salt), isn't the best strategy to deliver first?

Having say that, I know how terrible it is to work on some crappy legacy code and can certainly understand your decision. Good luck!