Couldn't agree with you more. For example, this is more or less what happened with Good Girl Gone Bad years ago.F95 users will take bad news and blow it out of proportion won't they? The dev made a choice to make a series of smaller updates while he gets his new game into a position where it has a lot of content. As opposed to one last big update to cap of the game. Yes, that sucks. But I can see the logic. He might be thinking that this is the best way to keep fans entertained while he gets the new game to a point of having a hefty amount of content. It's not about lack of faith. It's just how it is when you're starting a new project. Fans get bored and leave when you start a new project. It's why a lot of devs stretch out their game indefinitely.
The dev made a bad decision. One bad decision doesn't sudden speak to a lack integrity or manipulation.
GGBD had a huge number of fans (and still sits atop many filter lists for likes, watches, etc. here on F95zone too) but once it finished, the F95zone users weren't loyal or patient. Even though the very nice and generous dev (Eva Kiss) waited to announce their new game Our Red String until GGBD was complete, the conversion rate of those fans to Our Red String was a comparatively small fraction. Fickle and far too fair-weather, they dumped Eva Kiss like they'd done nothing for them and moved onto other games rather than support Our Red String's development.
That example and many others like it were lessons to F95zone devs about how they should release content if they want to maintain interest and heaven forbid, some modicum of monetary recompense.
If we're being honest, it's also how a lot of SFW mobile games work too. I don't fault Seez and Holdcraft Chronicles for exploring similar survival strategies.