Guess I missunderstood you then. Because your wording made it seem like you would only go back to moderating once they showed some actual consistend gameplay, which I interpreted that you resign from your moderation work for now.
No, you got it right, you just went one step further than I did. I'm still a moderat
or, I'm just temporarily not moderat
ing, on the grounds that until one of the dinos does something to prove the existence of the game (like releasing a "working" build, the definition of "working" being very generous), I don't feel that I'm obligated to put in any more effort on their behalf. Once I'm satisfied that I can say "there is a game, and this is what it looks like" without worrying that it might be a lie, then I'll start moderating actively again.
This the developer(s) lying through their teeth about a game that had supposedly already made but in reality didn't exist.
The pre-kickstarter game (call it TWS 1.0) very well could have existed and very likely did. And if the kickstarter had just barely cleared, or had only reached the first or second stretch goal (i.e., did not make the "Endless Simulation" and "Procedural Generation" goals), it would have long ago had its art sexed up, Religion and/or Rival Old Ones added, and been released ages ago. But it never would have supported the endless/procedural games.
The post-kickstarter version (TWS 2.0) basically had to be rebuilt from scratch to enable support for all the stretch goals. They needed new maps, new hexes, new AI, new everything. This very quickly ran into trouble, as we all know, so I won't repeat it here. But it had nothing to do with whether TWS 1.0 existed or not.
Looking back, what should have probably happened was KDG should have gotten the art together, added Religion, and released that as the "beta" (in other words, continued taking the TWS 1.0 path as originally planned) while working on TWS 2.0 to implement the harder stretch goals. We might still have had these lengthy delays, but at least there would have been no question as to whether a game existed or not - we would be playing it. Of course, that's easy for me to say now: I have both the benefit of hindsight and of not being the one actually trying to write the software.