Is 1.18 the final straw?

[Lilith]

They stated from the beginning they want this game to be build with the community, and that's exactly what they are doing. I agree that releasing the game has brought them some nice cashflow.
Maybe you confuse a couple of bad mechanics as intentially placed, which I doubt since SE has been struggling to get it right (think of targeting f.e.)
Another thing is, if your hypothesis is correct, the whole replacing Tanaka with Yoshi is a farce. That's really hard to believe imo.
They probably assumed they could polish the game rather quickly and didn't expect reviews to be so horrible. I'm sure they have alot of content ready since some time, but they failed on core aspects, so everything had to be pushed back.
I hope 1.18 gets a lot of things straight and that by the end of the summer we can expect some more serious content.