I have seen this happen more and more often, and I think at one point I already told Ed Burgess on one of the answerhub posts that this is --imho-- a very poor approach.
A recent, good example is: Unreal Engine Issues and Bug Tracker (UE-40510)
In 4.14.2 an fbx import bug was caused, and both the answerhub and forums received quite a few posts about it causing loads of frustration due to projects crashing.
in 4.14.3 this was supposed to be fixed, but sadly only half of it was fixed. (or poorly tested)
Now the expected version that will have this version fixed is 4.15.
You cannot expect teams/projects that are getting close to their release date to update to another engine version, one that (because lets be realists) might cause even more problems.
Who knows what else might break. (4.12 - 4.14 have good examples of quite a few bugs that get in the way of proper production)
Crucial stuff that interferes with proper workflow, game breaking bugs, editor crashing bugs --especially those encountered by simply importing a mesh, building a project, re-importing a file-- should be hot-fixed within the same engine version.
Now UE is demanding us to either update to a newer engine version, (which is not yet available/costs valuable time), or compile the fixes into the same version ourselves. (not everyone is capable of that/costs valuable time) or just live with it and alter workflow. (frustrating/costs valuable time/one mistake and you hit another crash).
It would be really amazing, really helpful, and really common sense that anything that causes so much frustration/building/cooking bugs/crashes should be hot-fixed asap.
Now while it might be wishful thinking, and just to let of some steam…
I am off to give the guy who just finished moving the game to 4.14.3 (expecting the fbx import stuff to be fixed) some consolidation and a hug.