A bit pessimistic overall, understandable in light of your spoiler "signature" I guess.
Games developed by single people or small groups as a "when I'm not at my day job and have time project" usually have slow development cycles.
Should they be more transparent with their earnings? I don't know, are you willing to post your income for all to see?
As for Patreon (you know the funding site we all hate), they keep hamstringing developers with their requirements, so there is that to keep in mind.
Cheers!!
1- Commissioning a bunch of art and pasting it into a VN engine doesn't take galaxy brain levels of manpower. They have "a team" of people allegedly working on this and their hat whenever they can and they're making undisclosed amounts of money and have been for 2 years with nearly no progress, that is at least very questionable. You're not working 7 days a week or 24 hours a day, that'd be illegal, you're also not using your Patreon money to travel and complain like Kuja is so what's the hold-up? Hell, Legend of Krystal: Rebirth is at least slightly more complex.
2- I'm not a public entity developing a game solely on good intentions and vague promises so I don't have any incentive to have a number up showing how much money I make a month. I'm a private citizen with a job. Were I making a living off donations I'd at least want to disclose that monthly average. However that's not the case here, you said it yourself they have jobs, this is not their main/only source of income and they made the choice to hide that on their Patreon page, that's an option you have that you don't have to tick, so I dunno, I'm just throwing ideas out. I'm a natural cynic.
3- Were I part of a group of people working together and recognised as some sort of development team that only makes money off free donations I would be inclined to at least show that number for transparency's sake, if not also the way it's spent like a lot of donation-driven entities do for the sake of transparency. Crowdfunding is essentially charity, and a charity with hidden numbers isn't a good charity. Lastly, I didn't ask to show me their IRS forms either, in fact I didn't ask for anything, I said it was a red flag that they were hiding it when even commission artists and twitch thots don't.
Well, while my involvement with the development is purely with the writing side of things for both of the games (as of this coming release). I can say this, this update largely involves a whole new section of the map (in fact multiple sections) that have been very time consuming for G-Zone, Morah and the others to produce, leveled with a whole new game being built from scratch, it's very easy to see why there's such a delay.
But, now the foundations for the second game have been established, it should help make future releases faster.
I sure hope so, just shows a clear lack of vision or direction if you're having so much trouble to begin with but pile on more for what I can only assume is just for the sake of it. You do you, at the end of the day my word is inconsequential. You already have an established userbase so you're not gonna be losing out on that monthly average any time soon, that's just how Patreon works. You already made it, sit on it if you want.
