It makes them more self conscious of bad code. The roadmap clearly states large amounts of refactoring was priority. Refactoring takes time. It means that development later can go far smoother. Refactoring is always required in a project of this size. It isn't about "Patreon Money", it is about fixing bad code habits that occurred earlier in the project. The Bates development cycle is a quite clear example of bad code slowing them down.
If there's problems in the development, it needs to be fixed.
Coding is a very prevalent problem for indie / new devs, especially for their first few games.
It's a good direction the devs are able to identify and refactor - it's not only smoothing further development, but enable adding features that's not possible before.
I don't know why people so fixated on crown-funding money, especially as a pirate.
When you pitch in / sub to Patreon,
you are not Investing / Buying a product, you simply support the dev financially for what they are doing.
Sure you need be very cautious at this day of age,
Tons of bad actors exploiting it with malicious intent to extra as much as they can (Star Citizen), But it also enabled so many devs to make great games (Larian and Divinity: Original Sin, which enabled Baldur's Gate 3)
You should understand which direction the project is going, Not blindly accuse the dev of milking "Patreon Money".
Mind you, "Refactoring" can also mean the dev didn't do any work but hide it behind some indistinguishable code changing.
