I didn't twist anything. There was a contradiction, i asked you to clarify it, because there wouldn't be a point in turning a discussion into misguided flaming. Especially a page after the thread got cleaned up.

Anyway, that's right, getting paid to do something and using the money for something else would be really bad. So far there was no indication of anything like this happening here.
I tend to short it down to PR, because that's a term i got used to and my posts tend to be a bit long as you have seen. I just mean basic communication, keeping in touch with the audience, explaining things without overhyping and in general being transparent and honest.
But the thing is: good communication is difficult, and there are a lot of people who are naturally bad at it. Just take a look around the internet, you will find too many examples.
And rehiring Sierra is not going to happen by the info we got. I don't know you well enough yet to claim to know your oppinion about this, but just as a side note she started to work on her own solo game over a year before she quit Hreinn.
The updates are slower than they should be, no question about that.
Obviously i don't know why they aren't hiring more, but i have a few guesses. The first would be money. Right now the team gets something like 1000-1200 per person, which isn't a bad income in some countries, but if anyone is from a richer place, then this wouldn't even come close to being enough as a sole income already.
My second guess comes from my point that the team lacks good management. Right now they have 1 artist, 1 writer and 1 programmer and each of them do their own thing. Would hiring a second writer or programmer speed anything up? Without proper coordination it would only slow things down.
But these are just my guesses from the outside.
And from what we've seen so far, they did recude the scope already, multiple times in fact. Take a look at the slavery/freedom stat. When was the last time anything used that, and even the catgirl enslavement route has been essentially dropped.
Another example is the Dajrab route and as a side bonus, almost certainly the solo route too. Dajrab's route got exactly 2 unique scenes in 0.3 and 0.8. and as far as i remember solo got even less.
So the scope has been reduced, but as you have pointed out, reducing it too much might take away a lot of this game's uniqueness, so that's not a simple solution either.