He hasn't at all. I wrote a post with all the "previews" he has released, highlighting the obvious problems with the idea that he is "working" on the game as opposed to scamming (i.e. not even milking, but doing nothing at all other than rendering trivial "promotional" images to keep the scam going):
https://f95zone.to/threads/dual-family-v0-98-ce-gumdrop-games.1870/page-468#post-2398851
His 8k/4k claim is also complete bullshit:
https://f95zone.to/threads/dual-family-v0-98-ce-gumdrop-games.1870/page-493#post-2499481
Assuming that will ever happen. I think it's more likely he won't ever do anything at all, like for the past 2 years. Why? because even his marketing material shows laziness. A smart, non-lazy scammer would have bought a few assets and released "in-game" previews a long time ago to buttress the idea that the game is under "development". This guy doesn't even bother with that: previews are basically fully naked models, no new assets or props, zoomed-in shots with blurred backgrounds. Very obvious he isn't even putting effort in the scam. That's why he started to commission other people, so he doesn't even do animations himself. Plenty of other devs on this site learned to animate in the last 2 years, while this one only scammed people.
The thing about gumdrop is that I don't think he's necessarily trying to scam people, it's why, like you said, he isn't even putting in any effort to scam people, and if he is he really sucks at it and he's lucky his patreon supporters are so low iq that he's able to get away with it. I think the reality is that gumdrop basically won the lottery, dudes making 8000 dollars a month on patreon, god knows how much on his website, and he was making way more before that in past months as well.
I don't know about you, but if I won the lottery I'd quit my job and stop working, maybe I'd work a little bit here and there, but not much. And that's exactly what gumdrop did. He won the lottery by striking it big on patreon, and now he quit his job, maybe he works on the game here and there, but I doubt even that. He's just sitting back at home, not doing any work, living the high life funded by his delusional paypigs.
Point is, gumdrop isn't necessarily trying to scam people, he's just simply quit his job and has basically stopped working altogether. Having a horde of naive, gullible, and outright delusional patreon supporters is like winning the lottery. He is making tons of money, so much money that he doesn't need to work, whether it be in a job in real life, developing the game, or putting in any serious effort to pull the wool over his supporters eyes. And he'll continue to not work as long as his supporters enable him to. His patreon supporters are paying him for no work, so why work? I know if my boss still paid me and wouldn't fire me if I didn't go to work then I'd never work again, and that's the situation gumdrop has found himself in.
I doubt he'd let the game die completely though since if there are a couple of things we know about gumdrop for sure it's that he's lazy and likes money. Letting the game die completely would mean he would have to get a real job and he'd stop making a shitload of easy money.
He'll eventually put out this update, it won't be for months, and more than likely it won't be for years, but if he never puts it out his patreon will drop to 0 (one day... I hope, his paypigs can't be that mentally ill, can they?), he'd stop making lots of money, and he'd have to get a real job, all things a person who is lazy and likes money would not want. And then after it comes out he'll put out some bullshit updates with little to no content and progression relatively quickly to boost his patreon so that he can take another 2-3+ year break from work.
