I'm ambivalent. Especially in my domain of games where sharing the financial breakdown can indeed help those "wrong" kind of people realize how little money there is in non-AAA games once all the cuts come in.
So instead they make up shaky heuristics, see reviews and wishlists and must think "wow that game made a lot of money"... missing important context on how much was spent on labor/profit splits, or the area the team is in. Which muddies discussion on what a "successful" game even is (a topic already muddy even with all context).
BUT, then again the tides have shifted so much in that people just take a "should have" approach. "you shouldn't have done it in X genre. You shouldn't have used Y software. Your game sucks so it obviously failed". So maybe bringing up any finances will always attract that crowd, not cause them to look into another place to make money.
There is a lot of that just like people think opening pizza place is a great business - if they look only cost of wheat and water, cheese; it sounds like god knows what margins are there, $1 ingredients and sell for $20. In reality margins are much lower and if you don’t have a good spot you probably will loose money.
So instead they make up shaky heuristics, see reviews and wishlists and must think "wow that game made a lot of money"... missing important context on how much was spent on labor/profit splits, or the area the team is in. Which muddies discussion on what a "successful" game even is (a topic already muddy even with all context).
BUT, then again the tides have shifted so much in that people just take a "should have" approach. "you shouldn't have done it in X genre. You shouldn't have used Y software. Your game sucks so it obviously failed". So maybe bringing up any finances will always attract that crowd, not cause them to look into another place to make money.