the tag stirred up enough fear in bluecat over losing money that he did something
Yes. This exactly. 18 months of rest and relaxation for Bluecat while he raked in thousands a month for vague, meaningless, statements and zero actual work, from anyone on the dev team
You have to be very, very, naive to think that it is a coincidence that Bluecat suddenly showed some progress, after 18 months without a single preview image, line of dialog, or a single detail about the plot, shortly after Ecchi Sensei got the abandoned tag here. I think is is clear that the game being listed as abandoned , caused Bluecat to fear that his money train would dry up soon, and decided to actually open up the ol' dusty archives on his PC and actually work on the game, so he could release something to get the abandoned tag removed.
I only wish it could have happened a year ago, when it was clear to just about everyone, barring a few fanboys, that Bluecat was feeding us all a load of BS as to what he was doing. Despite some surprisingly credulous people around here claiming the merge is so complex, nothing in the merge plan should have taken more than a month or two. Plus it was a bad idea from the start, and very likely a stalling tactic from Bluecat so he could do other things while he blamed the delay on other people.
Anyway it looks like we might actually some amount of new content in the next few weeks. We will all just have to see if he can continue with the development, or if he pulls a Icstor and goes on another multi-year hiatus.