My "beef" with Dual Family is not the game itself, that comes along nicely. It is with gumdrop´s lackadaisical attitude as a developer.
@Siddington is quite right, that with such an attitude at normal work, you´d be toast.
I am a freetime writer myself. I have two stories running (posted free on several sites) with the next two stories in preparation mode for when the first 2 will be finished. At the moment, the two stories are 1400+ and 300+ Din A4 pages long, so without self-boasting I can say to have written quite a bit. At first I could update once a week, but a combination of factors in normal life reduced it to about once a month since last year. I am not happy about that, but I have no choice on this. I work diligently to make the updates as fast as I can, so the readers can enjoy reading the stories. The joy of the readers and my joy creating a story is what keeps me going.
Then I see "developers/writers" like gumdrop, who boast how the story/game comes first, how his new hardware will all make faster...and what happens? It becomes a crawl, not to forget his first "progress indicator", which stood at 90+% for weeks until he had to admit that it is 50-60% finished at best. He openly lied the audience in the face several times, most of his explanations are ludicrous, since there are developers with less options and ressources delivering quality updates much faster and he gets paid for doing less.
If he lost the drive to see this game through, he should just say so, sometimes stories meet dead ends, as I writer I this well, no problem. But then the cheap money for gumdrop would stop. If he had solid explanations for his slow progress, that would be ok too, but even a 4 year old can see through the white lies gumdrop normally gives out.
Not for nothing some members spoofed his "explanations" in the vein of: "Another month over and 1 new segment is half-finished. Now since it is the birthday of Hannibal I need to take a 4 week break to celebrate this. But have no fear, since the game comes first, I will inform you later on."
Gumdrop´s messages feel like a) either he is incredibly lazy or b) he already finished the update and tries to stretch the intervals as long as possible for more milk money. He should make a message how he found the patrons he has, that would be enlightening. milking them is obviously easier than taking candy from a baby.
I am annoyed because gumdrop has talent for making games, which is why I am still looking out for DF and at the beginning gumdrop had some good update pace, but since the money started to roll, the "speed" of the updates plummeted and it is clear the money now comes first, not the game any longer.