True, but if the dev is irresponsible, why making less money should make them work harder if they don't like working hard at all? They just won't if it's not something they're passionate about anymore. The more likely scenario is that the game gets abandoned and they start fresh, trying to get new patrons to support the new game that is fun for them to make.
As far as Patreon/Subscribestar/Whatever-backed smut games go, once you hit the 'big leagues' and establish a loyal fan base, you're free to slack off as long as you don't become too arrogant. The trickle-down of paying fans is minuscule. If you bother to release something, anything really, on a semi-regular basis, your number of paying customers will only go up. You have to work hard to fuck it up.
Is it possible that Eva got used to a laid-back no-rush development? Sure, but it's likely that it comes from anxiety that the project of such magnitude brings. You tell yourself that small progress is better than none because when you panic in a rush mode, your brain stops working and you hit a full stop. If all these milking / lazy accusations end up being true, losing patrons will not make Eva suddenly go overdrive and return to the pace of Chapters 1 - 7 because it's simply not possible. At worst she'll have to cancel the project (can't afford colorist / coder etc) and try making another game that is much simpler which would allow her to release monthly updates once again. But then there's a risk of hitting mediocrity, where update speed becomes top priority instead of quality or interesting ideas, resulting in Eva's games becoming stale copies of each other. Is that something that "game dead" commenters want to happen?
My honest opinion is that Eva Kiss went over her head with this very ambitious project for a single dev and experienced burnout after working hard to keep up with the GGGB pace of updates. Eventually, that became a creative roadblock, and then she saw that she was not losing many Patreon supporters despite the ever-increasing development time.
I get that she might feel bad about the situation, but at the same time, there's no real incentive for her to hurry up a bit. 80%+ of her patrons made it clear they were more than happy to wait. So, she'll take her time, mull over things, work at a slower pace and not stress too much about the whole situation, you know? In her GGGB days, she had more trouble getting money when she was pumping out monthly updates than she does now. It's a double-edged sword because it can better the game in the short term, or we might get an abandoned tag in the future because a project needs a certain minimal pace of production to feel alive, viable, and still fresh.
I mean look at this:
The dev had a 2% drop in earnings in the past year despite releasing only two updates, one of which was a complete retread. Once an update drops, the number of patrons will increase quickly, while the drop-off will trickle down for months. Don't hate the player -- hate the game.
![We Smart :WeSmart: :WeSmart:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)