If raking in top 1% monthly earnings in your country for years (easily enough to buy a house, like he did) while doing nothing but post some GIFs every couple months is not "milking", then we have very different opinions on the subject.
Ooo boo hoo, someone is making more money than me and I don't like it because all I do is fap to pirated and free games while they are sitting in their castles, drowning in their unlimited wealth sucked from us poor peasants...
Honestly I'm happy Komi could escape economic problems and provide for himself by making HHG. People are acting like he just farted into existence with all this money from supporters. He made something and people liked it. He hasn't charged a single cent from any of this, hasn't put any paid ads and is simply creating a free game. If you're mad about the patron system, then take your discomfort out on Patreon or whatever crowd funding platform that is enabling this type of engagement. If Patreon shuts down right now, all that is gone. Zero security. Development length vs patron support can be discussed in better ways than just calling everyone milkers and scammers. This topic is nothing new.
There's more people dumping hundreds and even thousands of dollars into gacha and microtransactions, yet it's always "the patron supporters are being milked!" narrative. Even if they are being milked (and there definitely are cases), at least it's going into a sole developer that is hopefully improving their life situation regardless of how scummy they are. There's a reason a lot of the developers on here are from developing countries or from poor economic backgrounds. Imagine a maybe depressed or lonely 18 year old, who is maybe struggling with education and finances, ends up making a game in their spare time that is popular enough to garner this much patreon support. That is life changing. They now have the opportunity to improve their life situation. Obviously they won't turn into professional developers overnight or have any kind of professional work experience and/or scheduling. Makes sense that shit will take longer to make at times. Not to mention bad decisions made from lack of experience.
I'm not saying this is the case for Komi, but a lot of people here seem to think every developer on this site is some kind of industry experienced veteran who knows exactly how to optimise their time and have their life in order, just because they made a good game. It's usually the opposite.
If Komi underestimated the time to finish this project, he will learn from it as part of his growth. It's literally his first project, especially for this size and ambition. Even for most developers on this site (look at how many shit or AI art games get pumped out so quickly). Whether it's being naive or just overconfidence, we shall see. But I'm not losing sleep over it. Whether or not Komi should have paused his Patreon during non development periods, that's another topic. But some of the conversations here are dumb af and some of y'all really need to touch grass.