You uh, do realize that there was a long period of time where he was producing a around a hundred lines of dialogue per month and charging patrons twice monthly while also keeping everyone completely in the dark, right? There was also another time where he posted a "paid for by patrons" post without actually providing a game update (this is what caused me to finally pull my pledge). Like, he just straight up took people's money on a per-creation Patreon without providing and content.
Then there's how he handled folks in the upper reward tiers, who threw down a sizeable amount of scratch to get their 'sonas in the game, only to practically ghost some of them. Crome left a comment at one point discussing that. Many of the other promised things, such as livestreams and polls, disappeared for a very long time. At least the latter returned somewhat recently, so maybe there's hope.
As far as the game's content: the art is all commissioned and Bane barely does any actual coding. Ren'Py makes building a basic VN (which Blackgate is) very trivial. I'm not saying that's a bad thing--I'd rather artists be able to focus on their art--but hey, since you brought it up...
What Bane did was create a compelling universe, only for something to bring it to a screeching halt. If he's dealing with shit, that's fine--by all means, take a break and seek whatever help or comfort you need--but to continue to take money and give nothing in return, even occasionally lying about what you've "added," is fucked up. Do you really think that widespread, scathing criticism like that just came out of nowhere? No. It was years in the making, and none of the "haters" are happy about the lies, the radio silence, and the reported bugs that went unfixed for literally years. Projects don't go from earning upwards of $8000/month to ~$500 just because of some "haters."
I'll be the first to admit that there were some people that did get out of hand, but those were a relative minority. Most of us were trying to keep people from getting fleeced. It may be free to download, but people are still donating to it.
I will grant that Bane does seem to be making an attempt to be more transparent (though 4000 words in a month really isn't anything to write home about, it's a step forward), but, as they say, "once bitten, twice shy."