This is a common misconception. The ENGINE has been in development for 10 years, give or take. The game itself has been in development for ~5 years. Not only this, most, probably 90% at least, of both of those were done by a single man, who gained no profit from either until around year 3 of the game's development, whereas he had to work another job and may still have to while working on this.
I've really got to commend Schine, especially Schema. Not only could he have pursued a more paying career, such as a lawyer or a doctor, he purposefully set his life aside to pursue his dream, which, unfortunately, has a large chance of being a lot less profitable than the other options.
Not only that, they regularly face harsh and usually regurgitated criticisms from the community over everything they do. If they focus on new things the community's all, "Focus on getting your game fixed and working before you add in new stuff, you dumbasses!" If they follow this advice the community's all, " WTF is with you tweaking the old stuff so much that anything new is gonna break the game? The game is so stale, 7-month old saltines look better in comparison! WE NEED NEW STUFF!" If they take a break, it's "GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASSES AND DO SOMETHING FOR A CHANGE!" If they take a long time to do both it's "Does it really take so long to do something so trivial? My god Schine, maybe you should sign off your game to someone else." If they show even a little favoritism in any direction, the community is either up in flames or slowed to a crawl as it is now. If they choose to do everything equally like they had been, they are called mis-organized and unable to do anything meaningful. If they choose to reveal their current PLANS, they're going to be called liars when some of it isn't released on schedule or are redone. If they try to switch priorities every update they get "Fucking pick one already!" along with having to make sure the game and their plans can handle both without breaking or becoming unbalanced. It's really a lose-lose situation for them. Yet they push on, with no sign of stopping. They have so much patience with us, it's almost like they're being held hostage. Hopefully one day at least a somewhat sizable group of us on here can be appreciative of the work they've done.