The sad truth is that when Devs earn a lot, they deliver little and when they earn little, they deliver a lot. This is called greed, they get lazy and roll around for the patreons to continue helping, I've seen this happen with all "famous" games within the forum, the only way to reverse this is to stop helping so he can see the numbers dropping fast and start working faster, the table showing the update time only contributes what I think. 2/2/2/2/4/4/4/6/7/6 (at the moment)
You got that backwards
People start off "Hungry" (this is true across the full spectrum of careers not just Devs). The hunger drives you to put as much effort as possible, when the hunger is sated the pressure to be so frantic decreases. If it where just about Greed there would be less motivation to slow down, greedy people always want more.
I'm going to assume you will respond with "So we need to keep them hungry".
The problem with this is that the pace set in the hunger stage is unsustainable, you end up burning out, if you don't pull back and set a more reasonable pace.
In the beginning the story flows fast and easy, but ideas quickly run dry, the story becomes more complex as cannon becomes set and you are under constant pressure from trolls to change various components,
The code changes as you develop as a programmer and you feel pressured to rework earlier content to match your developing skills and the newer technologies that are coming into play.
I don't know shit about art, but I can't imagine it gets easier to present visually stimulating images that aren't just copies of what you have already presented.
Gotta love how people keep complaining about update times increasing as though the work load is a constant and creative ideas are inexhaustible.
If you disagree with my assessment, Please prove me wrong, develop a game and show us all how easy it is!
In this context I'd love the taste of humble pie.