A patron gives money to an artist because the the patron wants to support the artist for whatever the artist does. This is quite different from purchasing a specific good from a vendor or purchasing a service from a contractor. It does not fit well in a capitalist mind-set where all transactions are full of expectations and contracts. That being said, fek is doing streams now and people are enjoying those. Most interactions with the viewers happen in the chat, which may explain the large amount of patrons but low apparent activity. It still would be reasonable if fek would admit to himself that he probably will not work on Rack 2 in the foreseeable future and adjust the website accordingly.
From my experience, the reason a lot of really big (but dead) content creators on Patreon continue to get money for months and months (or years) after they've stopped posting anything is simply because people forget they subbed. Most of his paywalled posts get ~6 comments, the last one that stated he's still working on Rack 2 should be full of hype, but that itself was only commented on by 8 people for a total of 10 comments (two people replied to themselves). High chance a good percentage of his 1.1k-ish paid subscribers are those who completely forgot they were subbed.
Either way "capitalist mind-set" is irrelevant when it comes to goods and services in really any economy. If you provide value for a thing with a literal/metaphorical "price tag" and you don't get that thing, you should get upset. Doesn't matter if it's fiat currency being paid for a subscription on Patreon, ten pigs for someone's hand in a prearranged marriage, or praising the government to get social credit points.
People subbed almost entirely for Rack 2, his income spiking hugely (x10 I think) when he started working on it; they got about a year of activity, then he outright gave up after realizing he was a dummy for hopping straight from being a 2D Flash dev to a 3D Unity dev with no prior Unity experience. (I think he had some past Unreal experience though.)
I'm just glad this Levy guy seems to be really open about hardship and struggles, instead of like Fek, who did all the complaining on a *chan site and rarely ever mentioned issues or delays on his Patreon.
