It's pretty much exactly the latter. If you look at his stats on
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you'll see that he has significant jumps in patrons and revenue that coincide exactly with his major release dates and continue to support him afterwards. I always get a chuckle when people claim he's waiting to release until the beginning of a given month to somehow "milk" his patrons; based on that data, he'd be better off financially if he held a release until the end of the month so he can double-dip new people.
Speaking of releases, has there been any confirmation we're getting a Halloween update or is it just speculation? The stalled progress bars and the fact his QA testers are all active on Discord strongly suggest we might be in for a treat in a week or two.