Your thinking of Kickstarter or similar Where the purpose is to fund some end product to get them over the challenges of manufacturing or hiring...
Kickstarter on such a scale is really only for those, who know how to make a game and who have almost everything set up - else there's such a high chance it's going to be a disaster.
SS certainly wouldn't exist, if there was no patreon-like system. It's like 100% the opposite of a kickstarter project, because it started out as a coding exercise that wasn't supposed to become anything at all.
In case anyone here actually still cares about the game itself:
DC basically confrimed, that he updated some old "minor characters" for the tech update (like most of Erik's old art was replaced) while Debbie and other main girls won't get a complete revamp as of now.
DC seemed pretty movtivated to work on Debbie again, though. To me at least that's a good sign for the next poll or so.