How are they ripping people off if there is no advertised product to sell it's not like people can't just cancel the payment, it's like you said yourself there is no guarantee that we get anything the dev said that themselves aswell they haven't promised anyone anything so if people see that and still want to give them money it's clearly just a donation to the Dev
The tiers in the Patreon literally promise updates at the lowest level (in which there are none), sneak peaks at content in development for mid-tier (in which there are none), and early access to NEW versions for highest tier (in which there are none). Rationalize all you want, but patreon is for supporting a project or developer not just giving money away to some random clown for nothing. If that project is dead, indefinitely delayed, or the dev is unable to continue, generally they pause or outright cancel payments. Not everyone reads comments, not everyone checks back every day or every few weeks. He is already losing subscribers thankfully, but many probably don't even know what's going on. Definition of scumbag. Are you him on alt account or something?
You repeating debunked points isn't going to change anything usually people look into a project before supporting them and will have email notifications on their phone or just check in general, if someone is on patreon then the they would be quite stupid not to be in the discord too meaning they would have notifications on for that also. Saying patreon is to support projects is a brain dead take it's for supporting a person to help them not just go on every week and hope an update is out. Don't get how your calling the Devs a scumbag when they dont have enough funds to continue to work on an AVN that they own and chose to make by themselves you really need to take a long hard thought the devs use patreon to help with money not to farm it from other people it's an optional thing in the first place so it's not like the people still supporting them care that the project has been stopped, and what kind of a question is "are you him on an alt account or something?" Makes it feel like you don't care about the people who are supporting them and just hate the dev for cancelling the game.