You would be surprised at how many people forget they have their pledge running.
Dude is just scamming at this point while pretending to be active and then working 1 month for a release.
I don't get this "scamming" thing. The game is released for free by Stoper, people supporting him know that (It's written on Patreon). They also know he's slow, no surprise. They are not required to pay anything to get the game. He does not promise fast development, he admits in the same Patreon page that he is quite slow in releasing updates. Nothing is hidden. So, they just give him money for gratitude I suppose, but there is no scam involved.
They should pressure him to work better and produce faster updates? Yeah, I think so, but I'm not in their minds. Go on Patreon/Discord and ask them.
We don't see them, cause they're all abandoned
Stoper always have taken projects from others publishers (LoP for example). I think he has regular commissioned work where he's paid, I don't know he's free lance or in a team. But JOHN is not his main income, he migrated to Tuscany from eastern Europe where life cost is much lower. It could be unrelated to porn comics, with his skills he could work at something else. He uses expensive software like Marvelous Designer, Maya or ZBrush (along with Photoshop) that is really not needed for Visual Novels.
He also have a really bad planning management, he changes idea very often, remakes scenes. That also complicates the work for the woman that writes the dialogues for him, I suppose.