And although it may sound bad the last thing I said, it's normal behavior for a business, but I'm surprised that many people defend it as if DC was a philanthropist or something.
Well, both are very likely wrong. Of course he would not do it (for long) without earning money and he's proven to some degree that he'll go down ways which are popular among the playerbase for those reasons. That's indeed not philanthropic and he never claimed it was.
"Milking" on the other hand is just a overused buzzword in this context. Of course he could handle it like AdaptusSteve and others, promise to grow his company with more and more patreon goals. But to me it seems like he rejects that approach for personal reasons and simply wants to work on his terms, without a big team to avoid all the inevitable troubles that come along with it. I mean, according to himself he worked in the animation industry for almost 10 years ending in a slightly elevated position (I think he mentioned Blue Sky Studios once) and I totally get that he doesn't want to repeat that by creating that same work environment again himself. So if there ever was a second artist, it seems like it would have to be the perfect fit on almost every level and not just "some dude" who can draw.
If he prefers to draw his game himself, that's the game people are going to get and that's the speed in which the game will be finished. If everybody would at least accept tha, the discussion would be way more productive. And yes, it's indeed not the very typical business approach of maximum growth, a normal company would take.
And let's not pretend it doesn't have drawbacks. People tend to overlook at the funding/patreon numbers of SS have bascially stalled during those last ~12 months, which in my opinion happened because he didn't grow his team and because updates are rare. If he had hired a second arists and would release updates significantly more often, he'd very, very likely make quite a bit more money by now. Other devs like Adaptus Steve or NLT have basically more than doubled their numbers in the same timeframe. DC hasn't.