It usually is a form of milking the fans many developers. They seem to think that by adding time to the gameplay they are able to avoid actually doing the more labor intensive work like adding scenes.
Well, that isn't good news for me. Thanks for being direct about it. However, you cannot have it since I want to avoid the Walking Dead memes emerging.
There is no correct opinion in my mind since to each person lies their own underlying preferences. I simply don't like it and thus try to avoid it. To those who like it, good for you.
The most common failures seem to come from the endless grind some use, the impossible to navigate UI, the weirdly paced story telling, and/or the developer not knowing what they want to do with the game.
I think that it is just more uncommon in the minds of a good number of people and that encourages a type of scarcity mindset making it more readily appreciated when it occurs.
This game is a rare example of a Renpy game which has a proper resource management system that doesn't bug out constantly, has quality writing, an interesting premise, and fun gameplay. It is something which is actually worth completing.