I think it should be interpreted in a way that more than 1.5 years without an update is a ridiculously long time.
She hasn't been taking any money, so however long it takes is entirely up to her.
If you don't like it, tough shit.
Would you work for free for 1.5 years, then rush something out just to appease some whining, entitled ingrates on a pirate site?
You call it unreasonable, or ridiculous. A number of people share your opinion.
Equally, plenty of people do not give a fuck how long it takes & are happy to wait for the dev to be happy with her project.
I think people who fall in the latter probably have far happier lives. They certainly have one less thing to be needlessly angry about.
If the game is being worked on so hard, at least an interim version could be published. Anything else is just ridiculous.
When the whole point of it taking so long, is because she wanted to revisit & upgrade earlier aspects to a higher level that she can be satisfied with (as well as producing Chpt. 5), why the hell would she want to release a sub-par version, just to keep the whinging people quiet?
They'd just be whinging their asses off about the interim version, instead.
Anyway, the key point is that this game seems to have fallen victim to alleged perfectionism.
The obvious flaw in this opinion is that, whatever you do, you get better at it with time & experience.
So, if she can now make things better with a more polished product, why would she not want to make this happen all the way through the game?
What she's doing makes sense. From both a professional perspective & a commercial one.