Everyone that I know at Relic is passionate about the projects they work on. They love the games and are so proud of them. Most of them could make more in another field, game development generally doesn't pay as much as similar positions in say medical software or banking development. People are there because they love games, and they want to make games that make people happy.
They also love CoH and are proud to work on it.
I think there's lots of fair and valid reasons to be critical of Relic, or any game maker. I think where the criticism is unwarranted is when it goes from "Relic should do X instead of Y" and goes into "Relic does X because they're lazy/incompetent/don't care".
Unfortunately actions speak louder than words. Kyle said a patch with accompanying notes was coming 13 days ago and then disappeared. Passionate or not that's a load of crap.
Tightrope just had his invitational tournament this weekend and had to ban the USF mortar. This is the second time there was a tournament with a banned unit because of game-breaking bugs.