Vertcoin was no more worse than any other coin..
Yeah, this is kinda like looking back in history and damning people based on modern morals and laws.
Almost all the older coins launched like this back then. Super-controlled, difficulty-retargetted launches hadn't really been thought of too much. They're a product of multiple coin launches every day with thousands of fucking coins overall. Back then, a coin launch was much more rare so pretty much everyone interested was in on it anyway, making it fair at the time.