I do agree, take my comment more as an expresion rather than a description, in fact I do agree so much with your logic/statement that it kinda described me in a couple of times I got an early access game despite having a self-imposed rule about those things.
However though, I do agree but can't shake the tought of "how much of these echo-chamber people do act as the mantioned paying shills?", what I mean, I've seen many people that defend this game and some are almost cult-like or shills if you will, so am I too far wrong for thinking the way I do?, honest question btw.
A shill is usually a paid actor that has no interest other than money. You get paid for promoting something and that's it. It's someone posing as a fan. A fan however is genuine in that he believes whatever he's a fan of deserves promoting, they do it for free. If you want to be precise about definitions, that is - nowadays shill usually means something like fanboy so there's that.
People do get emotionally invested for many different reasons. Sunk cost is one thing, but there's also a lot of people that genuinely believe in the project, dev, artist or w/e and are willing to pay to see it coming to fruition. These people also tend to form echochambers and nowadays everyone's paranoid. If you like something you're a shill, if you dislike something you're a hater. For a fan of the game this thread might also look somewhat cult-ish from the outside. Simply because you get a lot of social cred here for shitting on the game, the supporters and the devs.
If you download the latest version of the game that's available here, it's imo obvious why some people fall for this. I would like to see the devs turn this ship around and deliver a good h-game but I don't see that happening. Which is a bummer because there's almost zero games with fetishes (monster/bestiality) and production values (talking strictly about graphics, character design and animations) like this failed project.