I wouldn’t say that not taking requests from a community forum is ignoring customers, for all we know they had a huge flow of requests for a Eurorack module via email and other ways and this is why the just released Hemod.
I felt spoilt by the last firmware update, it was amazing how many of the user’s requests made it, to the point that some users would have felt ignored if their request didn’t make.
Biggest problem with requests boards is when the requests are not viable, there is a backlash from cocky members who will start to tell the company they can do it and it’s just they’re not coding right. It’s a common theme from the small companies right up to the big ones. In one forum I’ve seen members trying to tell the company that if they can’t amend their code to do what they wanted, they are amateurs. One request was basically to double the device’s functions to two of everything. The company’s forum rep had to get on there and tell the member what they requested is never going to happen, only to be told that it can happen and it’s all a matter of doing this and that, like they have coding skill beyond that of the company’s code monkeys. Company rep came back with info on the memory capacity of the device and that it was full. The pushy member had to admit that what was already happening with the device was amazing on such low memory, which was nice for a change.
But that incident was not the only case of cocky members telling the company how to suck eggs because their request was denied.
Oh yeah, a company that allows it’s existing customers tell them what to do will fail.