This game has been growling in it's grave for a while but I was NOT expecting it's zombie to appear right on steam, especially in this climate.
Was surprised as well, last time I checked the development it was few years ago when he/they were working on a brand new engine to support PBR rendering and it looked very promising, but the lack of updates is a clear indication that he/they either lost interest in developing the game, or simply ran into money/time issue (because lets face it, developing a game takes time and resources, you can take 10 years developing game on large budget if you don't have a lot of time, but people won't wait, so less people will pay for it, thus no money and no time = no game, you could try to make the game on low budget, but that probably means having 2nd job = less time = longer development time = less money, the circle completes again, just going the other way around, there is no way of getting out of this, it's a vicious cycle... or circle, either way, I don't think he is trying to scam people, perhaps he put it out to generate interest in the title again, frankly I wouldn't mind if he/they finished the game on the old engine, sure it's a bit janky, but improve textures a bit, make models bit more high poly, give them nicer shaders, better ambient occlusion and if possible given the engines limitations (pretty sure it's DX9 so it might be no go) some kind of screen space reflections at least (should be doable, we've got reshade and that can inject RTGI into games, although I'm not sure if their custom engine and if it runs on DX9 could work with it, but in house solution could be possible, maybe some basic SSS solution to make the game and models look less like moonbase/runescape and more at least like a mid 2010s UE3 game.
On the other hand, we have some games these days that have very similar gameplay mechanics with it all being so physics based and all, VAM is a perfect example of a game that can be played almost entirely by physical interactions, if combined with VR and posing, there is also SMA which is being developed again and it basically plays exactly the same as it did, minus the fact to pose characters you just have to enter an editor in game but from there, same level of control, manual thrusting or auto thrusting, the girl reacts to you, honestly I won't feel sad if he/they (I keep saying he/they as I'm not sure if there was one guy or few people behind it, I'm 99% sure it was one guy that did it all, probably some unknown relative of Terry Davis)

abandon it, it's been dead for years.