I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that someone who is being paid to develop this game meet the deadlines that he himself sets (or clearly communicates when there has been a delay). As you note, this is a trend that a *lot* of developers in the adult game sphere are guilty of, and I don't think normalizing that is a good thing.
I agree with you, that if you post a deadline, you should be sure about it and do your best to be meet it or communicate, why not.
I don't agree that this is a trend and I don't normalizing it.
I've only written, that i don't think that Nef do that with bad intent and that his (release) history, at least for me, is more importent than his next message with how close he is to the next release.
I also have written that this is a habit of a lot of devs.
I haven't written that this is a good pratice or that this should be supported. I think that this should be, as always, look at a case to case base.
For Nef case, he shouldn't put out estimate, my opinion. From his post, he only put out a date once, written that it should be out in this month (April).
From his estimate and his post, this would be the explonerated day the update should have dropped:
2023-01-25 | 2023-02-14 | 2023-02-25 |
35.00% | 60.00% | 80.00% |
50.00% | 85.00% | 90.00% |
| | |
Case 1 | 2023-02-20 | 2023-02-28 |
Case 2 | 2023-03-18 | 2023-03-08 |
Case 3 | 2023-02-22 | 2023-03-19 |
Case 4 | 2023-05-05 | - |
| | |
Min | 2023-02-20 | 2023-02-28 |
Max | 2023-05-05 | 2023-03-19 |
Average | 2023-03-17 | 2023-03-09 |
What can we conclude? Probably nothing more, than Nef should't make estimates.
But if we whant to conclude more, the thrid estimates from Nef in relation two the first two, were for nothing. The first two were also too optimistic. Only the combination of 50% on 2023-01-25 and 60% on 2023-02-14, put the release in a time that isn't that much "false". At least currently, if the games comes out in the very next days.
But then again, it exist a saying for work and planning, double your estimate and change the time unit to the next bigger one.