The problem is that they are most likely in a rut of "I need to keep my patrons happy" but also "keeping them happy is stressing me out but my life is now dependent on their income".
No, she's in a rut of making promises she can't keep and then getting depressed about it.
She could probably get out of that rut in a month or two by just making her game. By just continuing the main quest.
The problem with that is that the game engine can't do it. It's an insane heap of spaghetti. The whole thing is going to have to be overhauled to support a finished main quest.
And that's what keeps her in the rut. She has to rewrite the whole fucking game to get into a position to move forward. And that's
such a big job.
So she - when she works at all - just fiddles around the edges, making minor alterations to mechanics that were only ever intended to be temporary, adding fan-made new races, spinning her wheels while still in the rut.
The real irony though is that - given the level of delay currently - she probably
could rewrite the while game from scratch in the time it currently takes her to do one minor update. At which point she could be set to just add content indefinitely.