That's what I was thinking. As I've understood, this dev has been focused on the game for a good while already, and has provided a steady stream of decent sized updates regularly, and is one of the more communicative devs out there. That's why the whole comment about the game being abandoned seemed so off.
The milking patreon thing is just a meme at this point and gets thrown around so much it has lost all meaning.
That said, the dev may be very active but he's also very odd in how he decided to structure his updates.
Conventionally I'd expect a title with monthly fees to try and give everybody a little something, or at least alternate different kinds of content from update to update. Instead The Company went on an endless cycle of pretty much exclusively John updates, to the point where I haven't even felt tempted to give it a try in what must be close to a year now.
That may or may not be more efficient when doing an overhaul, it may even have been greenlit by his patrons, but I doubt it's very successful in attracting or retaining players that aren't interested in sucking virtual dick.
So yeah, he's not milking, but I can't say I appreciate what he's doing either.
To each their own I guess.
