While I advocate more frequent oil changes, I always thought the cam phaser issue was due to poor material selection since the piece that keeps breaking is plastic. Either way, I have personally seen similar, stupid issues with GM and Toyota powerplants, too: Timing chain tensioners that wore by 50k miles and cause a timing chain jump (and valve collision), carbon build due to variable cylinder operation (v4 / V8 mode) causing ring separation, cams that have shaved themselves to a new profile due to VVT.
I think the issue is that when you continue to push the envelope of RPM and load on engine parts bad things can happen if the tolerances and assembly aren't perfect.