No. The issue is that the dev stole money. He put up what ended up being a pretty-looking demo and then said that he A) wouldn't work on it until it hit a minimum dollar amount and B) would keep the money from his patrons anyway. That is not what Patreon and other monthly support platforms are for. That is more appropriate for platforms like Kickstarter, where you are only being pledged money rather than having it donated and if the goal isn't reached the supporters don't lose the money. The project just gets scuttled if the goal isn't reached and pledges are refunded. What an ethical dev does is pause the payments when they are unable to work on their game because of other commitments. Like OrbOrigins who hasn't been able to work on their game due to legal and family troubles. While communication is an issue as you said, keeping the "insufficient amount" of money his patrons gave him over the course of several months while refusing to start development was incredibly dishonest.
I thought he took the money and developed the promised amount of content. That he also said that he will be closing the project if a certain amount is not reached. This is how I understood it. In this case at least every patron knows what he is signing up for.
To me there is always three parties Dev - Patron - Devteam. People that just download the games don't matter. Sounds harsh? Maybe, but people's time isn't worth anything.
I don't know the details, possible he is a scumbag and if he betrayed either his patrons or devteam, I will not argue that he is. And to me personally, that matters in regards to supporting someone.
If however, he mapped out a clear deal, followed it, was transparent and the deal wasn't that great for many and ultimately his project failed. That is not betraying his patrons or team. He is following the plan he has set out to do, the one he communicated, and sadly his patrons, as well as he, lost something on that.
But I don't want to defend the guy, he sounds like an ass.
However, he doesn't owe us anything on a pirate site. We have 4 million users, how many do support a dev? 20k? That would be around 0.5% - those download and play a lot more games than they support. We are talking about Indie games here. We are not pirating the big franchises like Blizzard, who are morally corrupt and deserve it.
We are shafting people who give their all to create something and make it somewhere.
I am not against piracy, also I've had rough times. Anyone in a time like the ones I've had. I kind of hope he downloads my games, instead of paying for it. If we fail because of that, then we didn't deserve it anyway.
Also it can help a game dev as well, if that means it spreads. But let's be real here.
We are not entitled to shit and we are not the good guys.
Edit: Math is hard, added 0.
