@deinol As I understand the Forge people, they meant it as a slander against games that were too complex to learn in one session or required "math" (anything more than 1-digit addition), and wouldn't make a lot of money or displace D&D.

But AD&D made a stupendous amount of money, funnelled all of it to Gary instead of Dave until the lawsuit, displaced Basic D&D by about 25-50% until they pretty much killed Basic for AD&D 2E. Remained too hard for Forgeites to learn.
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@deinol Most of the "heartbreaker" games were massively more successful than the Forge games.

Palladium, Arduin, WHFRP are still in print & cool after almost 50 years.

The one I almost agreed with them on was Imagine RPG, what a mess! But it's also still in print, has supplements & fans.

Dangerous Journeys got TSR'd which is both sad & karmic justice, but it still had more books & income (but not profit after lawsuit).
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@mdhughes

I don’t think any of those were considered Heartbreakers. The Heartbreakers were games where the designer clearly hasn’t played anything except AD&D and didn’t learn any of the lessons from the variety of games in the 80s that you mentioned.