ehhhh. Yes, it's great that he's acknowledged the struggles and paused billings when he thinks he isn't being productive; but the transparency doesn't change the fact that this was a catastrophic update. This update didn't go awry because of unforeseen circumstances, it went awry because its size was unmanageable. He should have seen this coming many many months ago. It should never have gotten to a point where he was struggling to edit a script of 50,000 words. When it reached 15,000 words he should have known that the update was spiraling out of control.
In my opinion, he should be in triage mode right now. In fact, he should have been in triage mode months ago. He should be working on finalizing a couple routes (or however he has it organized) in an effort to get something out. It's ok that he bit off more than he could chew, we all make mistakes, and that doesn't make him a bad person or a bad dev. But in my opinion, if he was truly admitting the mistakes and honestly evaluating the process then he should have scaled this update back many months ago. The fact that he has stubbornly stuck with the structure of this update despite its unmanageable size is concerning. This update should have been restructured many months ago.Nowhere is it written that this had to be the final update. He could have broken this up into multiple updates, or released portions of the full update as they were finished. But it seems that he fell into the sunk cost fallacy and has been banging his head against the wall for months.
Right now, there's no reason anyone should expect this game in February. It has proven to be unmanageable for him, and he hasn't made any changes that would make it manageable. I dropped my support because I lost faith that he knew how to get himself out of this Gordian Knot. In my opinion, part of being transparent would be admitting that he should have restructured the update a long time ago.