If you actually read my comment you would see it was a critique of the viability of year long release schedules and never did I claim patrons purchased a product so they should be entitled to a product. Since the point I was making was drowned out by your redditsplainment about how I do not understand the concept of patronage I will lay it out in a clear manner for you.
Patrons are not the standard consumer of adult games/art, they are the fuel that allows for devs to create the games/art. Patrons clearly do not have unlimited funds to support every potential project that catches their interests so they are required to be selective in the projects that they choose to support. Many projects have been cancelled or "milked" by bad actor devs over the years and many of the people that choose to be patrons have grown weary of projects that slip their self imposed deadlines. For this reason, projects that slip into year long schedules are highly volatile and will drastically hemorrhage support unless they are a dev that has high social capital/trust from previous game releases. Hence Eternium being able to support such a schedule with it's high quality and with a previous full game release from the dev. BaiBai has unfortunately slipped to many self imposed timelines to have the social capital required for such a schedule because as soon as that yearly release is slipped patrons will be furious.
Now to address the perception that patrons are not entitled to anything. Unfortunately, while that is legally true it is not the practical end of the subject. Patrons DO expect some kind of progression for their support. The example I gave about yearly released games with support set at $5 a month after a year being the same price as full retail games was intentional. People will expect much more of a project when the same amount of capital (or less) is capable of purchasing more content than any adult game dev can reasonably release in one update. This will cause the patrons to become more disgruntled and support will wane even in the case of highly regarded adult games, for this reason games like the mentioned Eternium engage their patrons with previews/screenshots of their projects so that people know the game is actually being worked on, this also allows for more engagement from fans in the interim dev time. Patrons are "donating" in the same way that when people donate to a blood bank they expect the blood to be used to help people not as paint for an art project. There is an implicit understanding that the project is actually being worked on and updates are simply a way for patrons to view the progress on the thing they support. A project is not legally being bought but this is simply a way to dodge responsibility for the organizations that facilitate the transactions. Unironically believing that is how patronage was used historically is laughable to the point of being absurd since it requires you to fall into legalese traps designed to safeguard organizations instead of consumers. If you truly believe that is right nothing can be said to you to convince you otherwise so there is no point in further discussion, however if you do not believe that is right you might want to learn more about historic patronage and artists responsibilities to their patrons and not how recent modern companies have changed the meaning of patronage.
TLDR: Twisted Memories will likely not be able to handle long term yearly releases on the patron end and the patrons will reasonably leave a project that isn't showing any movement since they can spend their capital in other places. Patrons have every right to expect things from the projects they support and the only reason we make distinctions between paying and donating is for liability/tax reasons not because patrons of arts have/do not expect results from their patronage.
