I somehow doubt that the dev should make stealing such a big thing in this rant considering how expensive daz 3d assets can be and I doubt someone would spend a couple hundred bucks or so on something that might not take off.
That being said I can understand how the whole situation is frustrating, but ultimately it's not the players fault if they don't like things enough to place a pledge. As a dev you're in theory in the stronger position since you can take the game to whatever place you want it to be, but since you're paid by how much people like it you can't expect a small fortune when you deliver a weak plot with stupid writing. In the end you have to cater to their needs, not them to yours and how much you'd like to make per month with whatever you deliver.
Also the whole "but they've been here for years, it's much harder for new devs" doesn't really hold up. Sure it was a bit different, because you haven't seen the same models that often before, even back then 2 years ago when people like Faerin started he had to convince people to place their trust and their money in him and his abilities and in the end it worked out pretty well from what I've seen, even more for devs like MrDots, Palmer and other big shots.
To end the post on a somewhat positive note: The coding and rendering seems to be good enough and if the dev reads up on writing a story or let's someone else focus on it while he does the coding/rendering I'm sure things can improve.
Edit: And for the sake of everything, take smaller steps. Nobody goes around and suddenly adopts grown adults who they met like 2 hours ago and if things will take longer (the island episode almost seemed a bit rushed) develop a bit of a sub plot or let things run in the background, for example what the others are up to or something similar.