Eric could have been more interesting and less problematic for a lot of players if he had been there from the beginning, as either Anne's already established boyfriend or even Max's father. The fact that he only comes into the game a few updates in, and then starts going for all of the women was abrupt and out of the blue. Then he was set up as being literally impossible to beat. Choosing what should have been the right options to get rid of him only made things worse, because the game was designed with the assumption that you'd want to cut a deal with him. DS didn't get incest, so to him it was about watching other people fuck your family while you jerked off.
I do think that this game needs a proper remake. Not the one that DS themself is making, because that's devoid of a lot of the incest aspect that made the original interesting. Incest is so poorly implemented in the remake. I'd like to see one without the grind, with better sex scenes, with Eric absent completely or at least more easily avoidable, etc. It sounds like this isn't that game on at least the Eric front, but I'm not going to hold that against the dev or anyone that wants to play it. They're making it clear from the start that this is the "What if..." version where more stuff happens with Eric. Best of luck to the dev with this one.