There is a reason why there are such things as priority and focus. Game development is using limited amount of time and money to develop a story, and wasting a year and a half of time and patreon revenue on something of tertiary importance is how games die.
Did you miss the part informing you that the new contract format was introduced in 2021?
Yet you're complaining about it, now? 4 years later??
Not to mention the fact that, since the new contract system was introduced, there have been at least 2 updates subsequent to that, which each contained plenty of story. This fact alone makes your point pretty moot.
Gracie hadn't even sat down to dinner when the new contracts were introduced, never mind been
shot!
The dev could've produced a whole season worth of story, worldbuilding or sex scenes at that time, which would've brough more players and boosted future steam sales, if he stuck to the announced "a story update, a lewd update" plan. Instead he got a few mini stories that have nothing to do with the main plot or main characters. This is not about me liking or disliking contracts, it's about a trade off between what could have been and what ended up being.
Given that it took him circa 4.5 years to complete Season 1, you somehow think he would've completed another Season in 1.5 years, if he'd not redone the Contracts?


That's simply delusional.
He wasn't even working full time on the game back in 2021.
It's not a trade off between what we got & what could have been.
What you've described is a trade off between what we got & what you think we should have had.
Entirely different things.
The result? The game is all but pronounced dead, and is definitely in a coma. Because fillers are not replacement for the main content, and no amount of denial will change the patreon numbers or amount of content produced.
The lack of content over the last couple of years has got nothing at all to do with the contract system introduced 4 years ago.
Patreon numbers have obviously dropped, as he hasn't released anything for a good while. No new content since the end of Season 1 except for the Steam repeat of what we'd already seen & played, + subsequently the codex (which I considered poor as an update).
If you're going to complain about the game not having any new content for so long, that's entirely fair.
But to blame that on the introduction of the updated contract system 4 years ago(!!) is frankly laughable.