I don't know how far you're currently in the game, but they did all of that in the last couple of versions
I did "finish" it yeah [full harem, Shauna is trans]. I saw that happening for some time, but that last one is the that stung. Like, why won't you let me be surprised to see Daliah and how deeper is Ethan's lore is getting?
It's almost as if you removed the famous Kubrick's stare from his movies and have Joker say "Oh, by the way, Lawrence has lost his mind and, after Hartman is done with his little speech and shit, he's is gonna shoot him dead and then he's gonna shoot himself. M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!
"
Imo it was very much a letdown, except for the date with Jasmine and the talk we have with Daliah. When it comes to Daliah though, you need to be really awake and pay close attention to what she says to understand all of it, because her storytelling is a bit of a jumbled mess imo
Daliah's revelations were really confusing... Mainly because the story jumps between Pennsylvania and Chicago and personally it's never clear where the hell the story -her's and WVM's actually

- is located, except for, ironically, when they are down in Florida. It's never clear despite the splash screen has Ethan wearing a shirt that says "Chicago" yet it's the wrong one because that's not used... URGH!
Jasmine's date was very good. It keeps putting in her head the idea that she can indeed be loved and that it is (fully) deserved. At first I didn't like the idea that it had to be in the cave because it had a place to swim in and those things -the ones that remind you of work/college- are a turnoff IMO, but it payed off alright.
The spa was obscenely long, which is the norm for every big-deal event in the story, Eden and Hannah is just annoying, unbearable filler, Zoelle was pretty cool... Nothing else comes to mind because it just. Never. Ends...
I think the photoshoot didn't happen at all because the spa and Daliah's meeting went on forever, and we know full well that time makes no fucking sense whatsoever and has ceased to exist
I don't think he started scamming intentionally, but suffered from mental health + no artistic direction + lack of confidence and he started rewriting, remaking and wasting time instead of dealing with the issue.
That's the thing: in a time in which mental health is taken very seriously, I'm 100% sure that his patrons (for one) would have completely understood
and send him encouraging messages and so on. I don't know if he felt like people would've thought "Oh, he just played the 'mental health' card instead of telling us he's taking a two-week break with all of the sexy money he's getting" and it doesn't even matter anyway if it happened or not because it's not our business...
I, too, don't believe he's scamming intentionally but, from the looks of things, he didn't deal with it and has been unfulfilling his promises for a long time.