I'd like to preface my 2 cents by saying that I think the Eromancer team are NOT scammers, that the comparison to Breeding Season are a bit unfair, and there is work going on the game.
Has the project been a little bit mis-handled? Yes, I think so.
While I'm not quite sure how far to go with this line, given a lot of it is behind Patreon paywalls, I'm of the opinion that the cart has been put before the horse in regards to the development platform, but the cart has too much momentum to stop without violently running the horse over when it tries to get back in front.
The re-tooled previews that I've seen are damn gorgeous (like, for real), but they also seem like effort better spent on a second game. Let the first game be called finished, sold and be making some money off of it's own merits, while the 2nd game generates it's own patreon money. Instead there's this awkward cold war between customers who have stopped receiving a promised product (for months I'd add), and a development team trying to reinvent the wheel. At what point do the visuals look "good enough" relative to the time & effort already expended?
I still believe Malise & The Machine will be finished and released, as long as there's a patreon flow. But something has gone horribly wrong somewhere on the train tracks there.