The issue people have is that he's been saying that since around 2018. Heck, I can swear the game was supposed to release in 2017, but I don't have a link to a quote on that.
But this game was supposed to release in September of last year, then also before Christmas the year before that (and if it didn't it would be free), etc. So anyone up to date on the game doesn't trust these statements anymore.
And as for the playable versions, the last update from 1.5 years ago was nearly identical to a version release 3 years before that, as outlined in
this post. So the game hasn't really been updated in about 5 years, and the current demo that was supposed to release a month ago still doesn't exist.
And if anyone ever mentions these things, the dev personally reports those posts to the moderators to have them deleted (by the moderators' own admissions), as well as any posts or reviews that constructively criticize the game.
Heck, the new format of the bi-weekly update posts was made by me. I did that. I made a mockup in Sai2 suggesting a new format that was more informative than the last.
My post was deleted and I was temporarily banned from the thread for doing that, and he still went and used the format anyways.
So that's why the thread has the pessimistic mood it does.