As a person who has visited many countries, yes, you are right, phones are great, BUT I also know how difficult its been to get cell reception when I was at an all inclusive resort or visited my cousins, or decent enough wifi to do anything sometimes. Everytime I go out of country I warn the main games I play, on my phone even, that I may be inactive, because one, I tend to get busy and get little time if I am out of country, and two, if I do get time, there's no guarantee I get strong enough data or wifi to actually launch any of the phone games. I agree that he should pause the patreon payments, without a doubt, and I agree that he should give us a bit more updates, but I do believe people are jumping to super fast conclusions here. Granted, I also don't know too much of the history and how prevalent it is to take a person's money and run for devs on this site.
TLDR, I think people should potentially pause their patreon subscriptions for some time, at least until he comes back, but I do also think people are jumping to conclusions really quickly