The right thing to do would be to at least freeze the donations until the game is updated again. Regardless of what Komisari says, the game is currently abandoned. It only seems they stay active in the community to keep rolling in the donations.
Do you mean ethically? Patreon is specifically designed for the opposite of what you write. People that believe in content creation without actually needing anything (even social media news) in return, like people support artists all over the world. People support them financially or by other means, and the artists then get the space and time to make art. Especially the time part is infinite. Supporters can withdraw their support at any time, but the whole time they support they must understand they do not buy a product, they support a creative direction, however small the end result may be or however long it might take. It's like blue sky's research, but for culture instead of science.
When it comes to that, I think Komisari is following Patreon's model exactly like it was intended.
Now, if that whole system is ethically justifiable is a different question altogether.
Also "
regardless of what Komisari says...", no, Komisari is the only one that can say a game has been abandoned or not. "Abandoned" is as much of a definite statement as "released". The only difference here is that with abandoned there is one individual that can attest to the truth of it (the creator), and with released, it's both the creator and others. Should Komisari take the next fifty years to release this game, and have worked on it every single day up to then, we will all say by the time it was released that it had not been abandoned for the fifty years before that. So to make an "abandoned" statement about it now is purely illogical. The only reason this site feels the necessity to use abandoned tags, is to protect the flow and organization of the forums (and I completely get that practical outlook in this case).
