[thejeff]

The devs do this part time and have, I believe, teaching jobs fulltime. (At least Kristoffer teaches.) They appear to be content with that. This isn't an attempt to break into the big time gaming world. It's a hobby that's self supporting and brings in some money. You have to understand that to understand the reasons for their attitude.

I fully expect Illwinter to be around, as long as they're both interested in writing games and able to bring in enough money to justify the time. 10 years from now? Why not? Or maybe they'll have moved on to other things.

And for the community point:
I don't know how many threads show on your front page, but it defaults to 50 and I'll bet you can't find more than a couple that are nothing but spelling/grammar flames. Maybe I just gloss over them, so if you'd like to point 20 such threads out...
There are some heated arguments, but very few are just here to troll or flame. The vast majority of people are told to leave are suspected piracy cases and even those are usually just directed to Shrapnel support.
This has always seemed a very friendly supportive community to me. That's largely a function of the type of players the game attracts.