I think it is more than far to criticize them. If you look at your restaurant comparison: It is more than far to complain when you have a hair in your food. I also was very annoyed about the release of Leviathan. It is fair to criticize people that give you a service, if the service is not good enough. But let's look at the scale of the problem:
A hair in your food, is 'gamebreaking'. You can't use the product anymore, this is one of the biggest possible mess-ups in a kitchen. This is comparable with the game not starting up anymore after a patch. the PU AE problem is in my opinion not that gamebreaking, yes, we lose a feature, but you can still play the game as most countries, even in Europe. Furthermore, it is comparable with finding a hair(hah) in a haystack. Like I said before, they would have to play a game as one out of 5 countries, to notice this problem.
I repeat: it is more than fair to complain about fuck-ups, Leviathan deserved the criticism it received. But the atmosphere about this game is so negative atm, that every single mistake is seen as gamebreaking, while all the great fixes are looked over. It may sound dumb, but I'm genuinely happy that I can see cores of dead countries or that ceding colonial region doesn't make the map jump. There is enough to be positive about, just the focus is always on what isn't good yet.