As I'm writing this, it gets to me that this is starting to look like a huge wall of text. Just to make things clear, I'm in no way attacking you of using an aggressive tone. Quite the contrary, this is a respectful exchange of ideas
I don't necessarily disagree with you..... and I think I am pretty mellow about the whole thing (as long as the dev is not an obvious scammer, so I do tend to support devs that have been around for a while). Harem Hotel and Pinktea games don't update every day....but it's all good and they do produce, imo, top quality games.
Still, if a dev is able to work on games full time it's because of the support of the patrons and that entails some obligations, I would think. If I don't show up for work without notifying my boss I will, sooner or later, get fired.
If I ever develop a game I will take it seriously and do my best to put out regular updates.... and communicate with patrons if, for any reason, I have to delay an update. Anything less, imo, would be unacceptable. The moment we are getting paid good money to do a job we have to be responsible about our work...it's not just a hobby anymore, it's a job.
While that may be true, I'm not enforcing the idea that no one should be held accountable for anything ever. I was merely criticizing the unhealthy dynamics were a dev could be robbed of their own game by loud and demanding "fans". I could cite multiple examples, but the one that comes to mind is ICSTOR who, on his own admission, burned out because of the patreon polls he was making that decided the direction the game should take. Then you have patrons that straight up blackmail their devs with threats of stopping the pledges. I can't give you examples of this, tho, because I tend to stay away from this kind of toxic
assholes people.
Also, although I understand your work analogy, I can't fully adhere to it. The point you're making is true, regular updates and communication go a long way to ensure that supporters keep supporting (supporter gonna sup), but to me, for the vast majority of adult games developers, this cannot be treated the same way that a regular bonna fide job would be. Remember that the creator is not, and never should be, the employee of their patrons. Also, the financial aspect differs in that you have multiple people paying you a little amount of money instead of one guy paying you the full amount. All of this has to be taken into account.
In your example, you're talking about a dev working full time on the game, but even in that case, it should be something they like to do, and not some obligation because people decided, of their own free will, to give money to the peep. I mean, I don't know if you've ever worked at a job you loathed, there is no amount of money that'll make you crap out something better than a polished turd. We're back to the original meaning of patronage: financial support provided to an artist. It would be hypocritical of me to imply that there never was anything asked in return by those wealthy investers, but in the case of Patreon, you have the reward tier system. If and when supporter decide that their money would be better used elsewhere, they should just leave.
To go back to the original question of this thread, there is a misconception on the meaning of patronage itself. But this misconception is not an actual issue, just different points of view. If you want to buy a product, you can wait for the game to be finished and pay a certain sum to grab it and if you just want the product, there are other way to get it. But if your aim is to support an artist you like, their the release schedule shouldn't matter (provided this is not a scam, of course). As an example, I'll mention youtubers that ask for teepee donations. In this case, you don't buy the videos, you don't buy the youtuber time, you don't buy anything. But by giving a few bucks every month, you participate in a support dynamics that will see you still get the product (videos) you yearn for.
One of these day, I'll learn to be concise, I swear
