For real tho, one thing that a lot of games on this site have in common is that the devs are (intentionally or unintentionally) trying to create games that are way too big in scope for a single person (or very small team) to realistically finish in an acceptable amount of time (lets say 2-3 years).
For example, I really like the game Harem Hotel and I think the dev (Runey) is great, but the game is currently at version 0.15 after being in development for over 4 years now and with 1-2 versions a year coming out, it will take literally more than a decade from now for the game to be reaching anywhere close to a 1.0 finished version at the current pace. I'm not saying the dev is lazy, but the game's story is taking on such a large scope that there is just no end in sight and this is an issue with many games on here. Add to that the laziness and/or greed such as seen for example with Icstor and to a lesser degree Irphaeus and you have a perfect recipe for milking patrons for years to come
It's easy for them to become over optimistic and think they will create the best game ever. Going through the ancient posts in this thread, one member explains the situation brilliantly.
Almost all of these devs earned average to no income, once they started in this game business their lives are suddnley transformed as they are earning 4 to 5 figures a month and are out-earning doctors, lawyers and even government ministers.
At that point, who wants to spend all day doing the right thing and sitting on their computer working on a better product to justify all that money being thrown at them? Nah they would rather go on vacations, buy new and fancy shit or just slack around as if they are already on a retirement plan, they can do whatever they like and as they are self-employed there is no boss to ring them up and say why they didn't turn up to work.
Many devs start out with over ambitious plans, but once they actually put them in practice realize it's very exhuasting to make their plans a reality. The exhaustion eventually reduces their will to finish the game and they realize they can get away with cutting down on their work more and more, the money will just keep flowing in.
And why do people still pay them? Either they literally forget about the dev as they haven't updated their game for months/years so forget to cancel their billing, or they develop some weird quasi Stockholm syndrome where they feel sorry for the dev and believe he is still trying his best despite the bullshit excuses.
And this is how we end up with the current shitshow situations where miliking from game devs is a thing.
I do think Patreon and other funding sites need to do something to clamp down on this sort of activity by the creators on their site, maybe not kick them out straight away but just put warning signs on them so people can better decide whether the creators really deserve their money. Patreon is a private business so they are under no obligation to give a shit about this, but if people are going to use their site to run con-schemes or launder money, then it's not a good look on their business.
