I think it's unfortunate, but I definitely wouldn't call "ridiculous". After all, imagine you were a writer or a filmmaker and you have some real-life, legitimate reason for having to halt your progress. Let's say 3 years down the road suddenly you find out someone has snagged your work and is in the process of hijacking it. Would you really be OK with someone effectively stealing from you just because fans have been wanting more?
I'm not defending CedSense; I have no idea what's going on in his real life. I'm not saying I don't understand the desire to see this game continue. I also would love to see this continue; it's one of the early games I played and I miss the hell out of it. But I don't think fans' desires should ever justify thievery of a creator's work. I don't think there is any circumstance under which that is justified. I would hope a creator is open to letting someone else carry on if they aren't able to, but I would never be OK with someone robbing an artist of their creation. That just feels morally abhorrent to me.
Maybe CedSense in real life got a call one night from an ex who told him he has a daughter...
But judging from last 3 years it appears CedSense didn't hire her as his assistant to help him finish his work...
Jokes aside...
Honestly though, when I see a game abandoned I often assume that the dev decided he didn't want to keep spending more of his God given time on Earth making a smutty VN... I always imagine they had a moment of lucidity one day and decided to turn their life around lol... I mean, from the narrowly focused perspective of this community all we care about is the new update to a game we like, but from a real life perspective, if you're able to turn your life in a good direction, and get a nice girl, the motivation to keep creating/consuming 3D character stories vanishes because, now you're living a VN of your own...
I imagine this is how it might go for some devs who abandon games:
- you start making this game
- you get some fans and recognition and praise
- you spend time working hard on it, you have a goal, a purpose, and you're getting better at this skill every day (we all know how renders get better over time)
- you get more recognition, more praise and fans
- you realise you're successful and good at something
- you become more confident as a person
- you realise that you could be spending this potential elsewhere, to actually do something more dignified (not judging but it is what it is)
- you use that confidence you've built knowing you're capable of making something if you put your mind to it, and you direct it to the rest of your life
- your life gets better
- you find a girl who's into you and likes your aura of confidence
- you cannot tell her you're making a smutty game, nor do you have much motivation anymore now that you're in a different position in life
- the motivation to live this new life is now much greater than the motivation to living out this imaginary 3D life
- you abandon the game and the community
- you're disgusted by it at this point so you don't even explain why you abandoned it because you think the coomers would never get it
I'm interested in what everyone else thinks of this... Einstein had his theory of relativity and I have my theory of abandoned VNs