Completely not true. The weekly progress reports and changelogs are free to read on my patreon.
Not quite sure what you just said.
No one is out of the loop, all of our progress report posts and changelog posts are free to read.
We announced like 2 years ago we would not be releasing new free builds on Itch.
Eventually, our new episode 1 will be released on here for free as the new demo.
But if you want to play the most recent builds, you would need to be a paid Patron.
This is so we get funding to keep making the game as it is our jobs.