it's been the same way actually even with the new projects today it's still ICO that they need to fund their project, they just name it differently today like a private token sale in which only 20% of the tokens are being sent out to the investors. it's just very risky now than it was in 2017 where every ico is funded and listed on the market.
i really don't see this project as different from other dividends casino. been an investor of bethash for a while but casino tokens are not allowed to be listed anymore on exchanges.
Private token sale is a "bit" different, as in it is the investors that get the token and not the project team and that sort of means that project team already has money which shows if they mean anything with that money or not. In that case if the team gets BNB for example and give their own token, it is automatic and the team has zero (usually) of the token, if they take BNB and leave then they leave and they are bad, but if they stay and spend that BNB then they are good.
You can see that, it is obvious and clear and allows you to actually make a good decision a lot easier. Sure you can't do that if you participate in the private token sale because you still do not know if they are good or not, but afterwards you can wait and in a month it is clear if they are good or not.