I mean, I can understand with the game being at the point its at now that patches take way more work now. I haven't been following the development of this like some games, so I can only judge it by the shit people are saying. It sounds mostly just like the dev needs to stop promising shit they can't keep up with though. Most devs can't keep up with the goals they set for the their patreon/subscribestar. It's pretty simple: The more complex a game gets, the harder it is to update it/keep it functioning (More time between updates). Money goals tend to be inflexible with these sites (Promising an update every month or whatever), a game like this needs flexibility on update times.
At least unless it's: The dev only gets paid when they release a new update. Patreon has an option for that (Though pretty much nobody seems to use it), I dunno about Subscribestar. That option still has the issue of devs just pushing half assed updates though. There's really no system out right now that encourages devs to be consistently high quality, they all encourage laziness. It's the default of human nature to be lazy and seek the easiest/less energy intensive route. If somebody can make as much money doing half the work, then 95% of the time people will do that. That's why I hate these crowdfunding sites that encourage this.
If it's between the "paid every update" or "paid monthly", I'd prefer the paid every update though. At least it's forces some kind of consistency in updates. The monthly pay is pretty anti consumer. The best method I can come up with would be a "pay only when update" and devs needs to post/follow a to-do list for the next patch. They can only release the new patch when all the stuff on the list is complete. That would give people the option of seeing exactly what's coming and know if it's worth investing in.
Any devs that post their own roadmap/to do list and actually follow through with it have my respect, because it's hella professional and hella rare, lol.