I somewhat agree. This firing has more to do with the band's engineer and perhaps the band themselves than with SAC's shortcomings. Or at least just as much.
However there are a lot of reasons one might use a VSTi live. What if the VSTi is the instrument in the first place? What hardware should the musician be caring with them then? An old ass Akai sampler? I think not. There are plenty of perfectly reliable ways to host virtual effects, instruments, backing tracks, etc in live situations and have them be perfectly reliable. If it's for a big buck show or some A list act you better have a full blown, simultaneous redundant system set up so only a major disaster would keep the audio from flowing during the show. Oh.. and know how to use it also..
If these guys were really scheduled to play 8 times and didn't perform once, then they are just as big of an idiot as the engineer. Not sure how a malfunctioning SAC system would cause amps to fail?
Anyway my point is there is no reason to make blanket judgments against VSTi or any plug-ins in live situations. Many acts have been doing that perfectly reliably for many years now and the folks that know what they are doing probably get good money to assemble and operate appropriate systems that would never fail 8 times in a row. They just are not using SAC to host that kind of thing.