The ongoing situation with this game brings up some questions about the status that I wish the site mods would consider.
First off, I downloaded this game from F95 about a year ago, and loved it enough that I became a patron. I didn't bother to read the comments in this thread right away, because I assumed they were mostly reviews/criticism or gameplay discussions. When I finally did read, that's when I found out about the dev's shoddy update record, but the most recent update was only a few months old by that point, so I stayed a patron for a little bit longer before I accepted I was being milked and dropped it. I'm positive there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other people with a similar experience.
The problem is, the status tag is supposed to inform users of what to expect, update-wise. If a game is unfinished, the on-hold tag tells them they'll probably be waiting awhile for more content, if any at all. An abandoned tag tells them once they've played through, that's it. Having neither of those tags nor a completed tag tells users that they dev is still working on it and they should expect regular updates.
The letter of the law is that if a dev gives a progress update at least every 3 months, then the site will treat it as an active project. The traffic from F95 is obviously VERY important to ICSTOR, because he makes sure to NEVER let those 3 months pass without making a claim about his "progress", so we have to assume that F95 is crucial to his income. He knows well that he'll get a steady influx of new patrons who think this game is still being developed, and that when they find out they're being milked and dump him, more will replace those.
But there's a clear situation where he's violating the spirit of the law. His progress updates, by his own admission, are bullshit. If he says "almost done with v0.7! It'll be here in a month!", then comes back 3 months later and says that, no, he hasn't really done anything for v0.7 (but I will now!), then the earlier update was a lie. If he had been honest, and gave a true progress update, then F95 would have marked it as on-hold or abandoned.
My point is, the rule needs to be fixed so that false updates are retroactively treated the way they would have been if they had been true. If the statement that kept the tag off of the game was false, then the mods should immediately apply an on-hold tag until the next update. If the dev keeps giving false updates during that time, then the abandoned tag should be applied. Otherwise, the tags don't serve the purpose of informing F95's users, they only serve the purpose of devs who may be willing to take advantage.