My personal opinion, I was sad about the lost 2 hours of lifetime last night. The idea itself, as far as I think to understand it, to use a big group to generate steem dollars, keep some of it and give some big prizes to a few lucky winners, is quite clever. I'm actually sad we lost this game. It were just not the right people implementing it, so it is good we lost it. It could have worked if they would not have been so exorbitantly greedy with all the other products they wanted to sell around the project. Total turn off is expecting 300 people to pay US$ 2,500 each for the 'honor' to develop the product in the first place.
To answer your question, the reaction was surprisingly drastic and direct. But totally worked. And that is what impresses me most about a community that is forced by design to create good content. It's obviously working. Which, in our world, is a bit surprising to say the least. Usually systems are designed with good intentions, but people still abuse them heavily everywhere. Not so much with steemit and we should be cautious to keep it that way.
One thing though is not always working. People promoting obvious pyramid ponzis. It's always the same story, since beginning of history. Some people with a substantial user base make a lot of money by promoting it, earn huge in lead bonuses, some of their followers profit as well, but the vast majority loses when the system collapses inevitably sooner or later. And they know it. And everyone else should also know it, but many people still follow. It’s plain stupid. And yes, this is happening every day on steemit and we all know some bigger names who do it. So, what should we do with those guys?? Let them still make a profit from the ones they send into doom? Well, good question. Everyone still has the right to make own decisions. But maybe a warning sign can be attached to those postings or a link to a scam reporting site. Like “smoking kills” on cigarette boxes.