How about everyone just... stops being mad and insulting each other? Like, if we want to have a useful, productive, and just generally good-to-be-around comment thread... How about we stop just repeating the same points of "gamedev is hard" and "dev is a scumbag lol" and just have a discussion about it?
Like, sure the dev is taking a while to make this update, and it might be a slower pace than early updates, but lets be honest here: Have you seen a porn game that didn't slow down in update speed after some time? The early updates are always the fastest, since the devs don't have that many expectations on them for high quality, and they don't have as much content and story complexity to work around. Everyone expects each update to be at least as good as the last one, and if updates just take more time as time goes on, the players/patreons will expect the longer updates to be better to justify. Not to mention that devs work quick on the first updates since they're full of energy. They haven't been hit by burnout since they just started, but as time goes on, it can get tiring to work on a project for such a long stretch consecutively, even one you really like, as I can personally attest to (although obviously to a lesser extent, I'm not really a gamedev.) Plus, I don't know if the dev is working full time on the game or whether they also have a day job, and if so, you guys should really be giving a bit more slack.
However, the dev making the players wait so long for one big update rather than finding some way to either release it as either a buggy "beta-version" situation (like most games, porn or otherwise, seem to do these days), or even splitting up the update into two or more parts. If the update takes this long to put out compared to other ones, where Patreon's system bills monthly/yearly, the dev should have almost certainly gone with some other plan over making Patrons wait more than a year for a single actual update to the game. I don't know whether the dev has done this, but I see lots of other devs, artists, or content creators of other types refunding their Patrons for billing cycles they didn't put anything out on. That seems like a very reasonable thing for this dev to do given the situation, for at least some of the billing cycles, and the fact that they haven't (if they haven't, again, i don't know), is a little suspect. Not impossible that the dev either doesn't know that that's a thing they can even do, or that the dev is just really lacking in terms of money, but if the latter, then the dev should definitely make a statement about it.
Also, despite what I said in the prior section, the speed of updates is pretty unreasonable by any standards, unless this update is just inordinately massive. It is a complicated game with very well-made art, but that doesn't justify the absolute massive timescale of this update. True, the game is made by one person who may or may not have a day job too (idk), but this is just one update, not a whole feature-complete game. And the Patrons aren't investors, so really, comparing this to mainstream game dev just isn't helpful, there's too many dissimilarities.
In the end, Patreon donations are completely voluntary, and if you're a Patron and continue to donate, you should notice the pattern that this update is taking way long to make, and either stop being a patron (like I'm sure many have already), or come to terms with the truth that the game may not be getting done any time soon, regardless of whether that's due to poor work ethic or a dedication to quality and making their game the best it can be. If you aren't a patron, have a little gratitude to those who are, for funding a dev who would likely have a lot less reason to be giving you guys free and high quality porn games if not for their donations.
And please, nobody talk about patrons "dickriding" the dev, or non-patrons being stupid and not understanding how gamedev works in "the real world" or whatever. It doesn't accomplish much of anything besides wasting everyone's time, making random strangers feel worse about themselves/get angry for no good reason, and making this comments section completely unusable.
