Even with the drama and lack of updates and what have you, I'd probably have played it more if there wasn't so much competition in this genre just now. Crafting/survival games are big in general, and since Starbound's early access release, I've gotten Edge of Space, Signs of Life, Darkout, and Windforge combined for less than I paid for Starbound. The first two are definitely less fleshed out than Starbound, Darkout came out the same day as Starbound and has been massively overshadowed ever since, and Windforge is just odd. Still, I've seen them all update more than once in the past however many months. I know there's also at least one more that I don't have, though it's slipping my mind at the moment. With Terraria still in my library as well, I just don't see the reason to start up Starbound at this point.
I also get the feeling that they are tired of having Starbound hanging over their heads. I suppose I can understand that.
I also think I need a better metric that $1/hr. I've played Starbound for 18 hours, but I don't really feel satisfied with that time. I don't plan on asking for a refund, I just feel like a lot of that time was kind of empty grinding punctuated with finding cool things. My fondest Starbound memory is realizing they actually had a sensible way of placing background objects.