[Raapys]

SEIV has proven to be an order of magnitude or two greater in popularity than SEIII was... It went from shareware to having an actual publisher. Would you say SEIV is worse than SEIII?

Not at all. However, what scares me is when developers of a game series you like start to aim for a bigger audience, because their previous game became more popular than expected.
Now, a bigger audience *is* a bad thing for a gamer who's followed a series and has certain expectations.
The more people you make the game for, the more diverse their opinions about a game feature will be. So where as that company might have pretty much designed the previous game(s) for yourself and others like you, that could change if they decide to aim for a wider audience.

There's been a few titles that have dissapointed me that way lately, but then I barely see any good(subjective opinion of course) games released at all, anymore.

Anyways, I'm not saying that's where SEV is going. I don't believe it is, actually, because the developers have so good contact with the great community here, and the game series is still not very well-known.
I just don't like it when games become too popular.