No sane person eh?
Not sure how many Patreon devs you just called insane, but there are quite a few projects that were or still are remastered, or had scenes redone, added or removed, visuals reworked and whatnot before the game was ever finished.
As far as I understand the tech update was actually voted for, but of course nobody knew it would take this long and come out this badly.
And yes, he would've made money regardless. Until the game was finished.
That was over 2 years ago so he would've been finished by now and need a new project, preferably one that was far enough along for people to play. Instead he's slowly readding content he already has available, which is a whole lot easier and requires very little effort.