Not using it as a backup strategy. But it doesn’t matter. Vim has a feature, persistent undo. People are using it for whatever reason. Under your blessing or not. A different app, neovim, broke vim’s feature.
They don't get a pass because you disagree with an imagined use case.
Yeah, they could have done better, but to say they "had no concept of a duty of care to their users"... Isn't it a bit much?