To be perfectly honest, DC has the money now to just flat out buy support from users and mods.
I think the only question that needs answering is why the dev dangled a carrot saying it would take a few months for the tech update 6 millennia ago, knowing that even now he still hasn't even finished the art which is his main thing in all this (and people tout like some triumph that he streams to prove he's still working on stuff).
I can understand underestimating how much art would be involved by a few months, but saying the entirety of the update would take months and yet his side of it that he would have known inside and out before even starting still isn't done after a few years? At that point you really can't honestly defend the guy, nor argue against anyone being critical of this.
DC doesn't really care about completing the game, he himself has said and made it clear that the game will never be finished. However, he promised it would only take a few months, but that's not what happened. Many game developers have already commented here too, and they all have the same line of reasoning as all those who criticize DC. "With the money and time that development is taking, the game could have been completed ages ago, and he could have made the same game on several different engines. And he could have created another game if he wanted to." Not in those words, but clearly in the same direction.
Criticizing DC in this thread is prohibited, DC defenders report all critical comments made after the delay and the comments are deleted. For them, criticism is a troll's art, which violates the site's guidelines, which they say is pirated. It really is something we will never understand.