I only tangentially follow the news (original backer for the $35-whatever-tier), but last I checked, there was a reality check ~1 year ago.
They actually hired and empowered a PM to ride herd over the project (including Chris Roberts), and that's helped with forward progress.
Previously, it seemed there was a lot of unnecessary technical churn for artistic reasons. E.g. the "We can make this thing 5% better, but it will take a 50% increase in time because we'll have to rewrite a lot of code" request.
> The DID stop adding stretch goals/scope creep.
Probably because it drew major criticism and they simply found out people would throw even more money at them if they simply kept "releasing" new ships (or rather their concept art).
I think it's an unfair comparison only because they make it clear that a "pledge" is to support development of the game. Like getting a keychain from a patreon artist.
But it's ultimately unprecedented, and we are all learning as we go. I doubt there will be a crowd funded game like this again for a while.
But it already went way too far in scope before they stopped scope creeping.
Not a scam, just bad planning IMO.