That quickly turns in to, the rich guy who will profit from the lawbreaking needs a scapegoat. Always more dignified to tell important people they're out of line by punishing their serfs, don't you know.
The developer (contractor) can be at least as big and wealthy as the buying company.
I don’t mean developer as in an individual contributor, I mean an implementor, often contractor, which will normally be a company too.
Right now it’s too easy to cut out a niche of selling snake oil services like “automatic cookie banners” with dark patterns and batteries included. Meanwhile companies are fooled by these companies into thinking that if they just pay the $ for their “compliance solution” they are done. Here is where I’d like to see the sellers of the snake oil take part of the responsibility and not just the buyers.
What is it's a small company, perhaps even a single person company? Punishing them would have a disproportionally greater negative effect on their livelihood than it would for the people in charge of the company ordering the illegal thing to be built.
You mean, a company in the business of selling cookie banners that are deliberately in violation of regulations, should be spared because its owner needs to eat? I can't see why anyone would have that sympathy.
I'm arguing against going after small business contractors implementing stuff that is deliberately in violation of regulations and instead going after the large business that is ordering such an implementation.
The products work like so: you can buy them and not put the switches in the dark pattern mode (Not called that). Or you can flick on the switches and make the experience of rejecting 3rd party cookies annoying and unlikely. Called "optimizing visitor experience mode" or similar. And companies that buy them obviously want to do that.
Are they aware that this is when they stop complying, to the point that they could just as well have ignored buying the banner service and just shoved cookies on people quietly like they did before? Perhaps. It's possble that lawsuits could work here too. I'm (like you) guessing there is some fine print saying that you absolutely cannot use the switch that makes the "reject" button disappear under the mouse and have a delay of 60 seconds. And if you do then you are responsible yourself.
That quickly turns in to, the rich guy who will profit from the lawbreaking needs a scapegoat. Always more dignified to tell important people they're out of line by punishing their serfs, don't you know.