I think it relates more towards the amount of each patron ends up giving for, and let's face it, a mediocre entertainment medium compared to AAA titles. What I mean is, when a AAA title hits the proverbial shelves, it doesn't normally add up to a few thousands of dollars' worth.
Bare with me here for a sec, when for example GTA5 launched, it was about ~$80 for the base game itself. And you get your money's worth. But when it comes to VN's for some reason, unlimited donations from the player base for an incomplete product is simply mentally retarded and defaults to a norm for the industry. Yet people are fine with doing that. That's completely outside my capacity of understanding. Dropping a few bucks at update releases is much more reasonable. But this business model exclusively takes advantage of people with more money than brains, and that's including those with barely enough to put food on the table.
But it is what it is. And my only option is to just do the reasonable thing and not subscribe to the default of "oh take my money, I need to see fake boobs because pornhub is too realistic", or whatever the reasoning is.
Anyhow, that's kinda how I see it as.