To be fair, Orb had to put working on the game aside to handle real life shit and put Patreon on pause to this day. He was very upfront about his situation and people that knew about it understood.
Right, John did tell him that but do you not know John? He could have just as easily had lied about it. Sylvia becomes indebted to him and he didn't have to do crap.
Well I'm talking about what most ppl see at the end of the day
While you, patrons, supporter know the dev behind story, at the of the day, imo, how the game state defined is based on the result like this game for example
If no result delivered (yet) for so long it may fell into abandoned category
Even if you said you worked hard but you don't get any output from it most ppl won't care or believe you work hard
Progress wise game may not be abandoned but since no actual update for such long time and usually dev went into some hiatus or even ghosting their supporter it fell into abandoned category
Even if no new content delivered most games aren't bug free and it has minor fix todos
Applying minor fix is like min effort to keep the ongoing tag like some regular maintenance for unfinished game
If even this is void, imo most ppl will see a game is abandoned