If the author had a big development team, I could see splitting time being a non-issue because it wouldn't affect the amount of content released over the split time... But I doubt that is the case... As far as money is concerned, of course splitting the time, from a money making point of view, is a good business strategy... Because now the monthly payments keep rolling in over a longer period of time with two money supporting fan bases to increase the amount of money coming in each month... Sure, from a creative and release strategy point of view, it's horrible to split it up like that, because now the originating game will take twice as long to be produced which has it's upside and it's downside... But some folks are greedy, and it makes sense to do it that way from a greed point of view...
Even if the decision was put up to a vote, because the paying fans are ok with it (for those who actually voted), of course it's a win-win situation for the developer... It might have blown up in the developers face otherwise, because he/she could have split the time with out a vote, and angered those wanting the original project to get a move on (and therefore the money flow might of been lowered)... Sometimes ideas pop into peeps heads and they just can't wait to work on it, which is most likely what happened in this case... They just used a vote to make it appear more palatable since the paying fans didn't mind as much, after being given a say before hand... It might have just as well gone the other way...