Nobody should care about devs not being warned about the Vita store closing. It's a failed handheld that was supported for nearly ten years. Anybody still developing for it was asking for financial ruin either way. It's not like they were going to sell a ton of copies of their game on Vita. Might as well complain about people who make bonfires with their own money getting robbed.

I don't understand why they are closing the stores down. Especially PS3? If the 360 store was profitable enough for MS to roll it into the Xbone and X|S store, surely the PS3 store still generates revenue? It can't cost that much to keep it up and running.

There were still over 50 Vita releases last year and a few releases this year:

https://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/release-date/available/vita/date?view=condensed

But I agree, a warning to all registered Vita-developers would probably have hurt more than helped.

The closing of the store front would have leaked months ago from one of these developers... without the context that redownloads of bought content or PS+ content will still be possible.

That would have lead to wild speculations and fearmongering: "all your digital content will go away in a few months!"

Both Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S are largely compatible with Xbox 360 games, so continuing to sell them makes perfect sense. The same doesn't apply to PS3 games, which are not playable on PS4 or PS5. If PS3 games were playable on PS4 or PS5, I doubt Sony would close down the store. In fact, that's a pretty good sign that PS3 compatibility is not on its way (and even it if is, Sony intends to sell you the same games again).

Of course they would sell us the games again. There are a few PS2 games on PS3 that are also on PS4, but you still had to rebuy them. Also there are only 54 PS2 games on the PS4, whereas the PS3 has 336 (doesn't include compilations). The PS4 also doesn't have any PS1 classics, whereas the PS3, PSP, and PSVita have some. 

What about 3DS games for comparison? How long did original DS games get released for? It would be really interesting to see what kind of releases systems get in their twilight years for comparison's sake. But yeah, I agree. Had they told devs, a dev would have leaked it without context. I suppose Sony could have made a big press release about the Vita store closing a year prior to it actually closing. But I'm sure there'd still be some devs out there complaining that a year's warning time isn't long enough.

Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. Meanwhile internet pundits make a big deal out of it, because they thrive on controversy.

Not exactly a huge fan of that, but sure, can't argue about that.

We absolutely should care about Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo being transparent and supportive of developers.
The fact is... Sony communicated *nothing* to developers and continued to sell dev kits to developers right up to the announcement.

That's shitting on those who build games to make your platform better. - That is how you loose developers to your competitors in the future.

They continued to sell dev kits past 2019? Proof? Or is that just something you invented?

https://www.thegamer.com/meet-the-developers-who-are-about-to-lose-their-ps-vita-games-forever/

This article was published a week ago, and it says:

"To make matters worse, the studio bought a new PS Vita developer kit through Sony just last month, with no warning about the looming closure. Some bigger-name developers (who asked to remain anonymous) were warned in advance."

This says to me they were indeed selling Vita dev kits until the last possible moment.