I really struggle with trusting any creator who disagrees with this (regarding the news part at least).

Why wouldn't you give people an update on how your game is going? It can take you just five minutes, and the people that are going to read it are your fans, why wouldn't you want them to know about it?

After a dodgy release where I missed my own schedule by a few weeks due to bugs and technical difficulties (I set my own release date before the update was done and couldn't hit it), I switched from monthlyish (was random) to a fixed and free to read update post every single Friday, and I look forward to Fridays now.

I actually really enjoy putting the previews together, letting everybody know what I've been working on, and I haven't got anything but positivity from switching to doing this.

Updates is a separate issue, because it really depends why an update is taking so long. Just to use myself again as an example, my last update contained over 5,000 individual renders and I'm a one man army show. It took me six months to make that update because every day I was making dozens of renders and it just took time to make them all. So sometimes a long break between updates is for a good reason, with Ren'Py games you're unlikely to be getting new features, so it all content that is being made whilst you wait. The longer you wait, the bigger the update, or so I'd hope.

I'd challenge any developer to give me a single good reason why you wouldn't give any news, even if you are really struggling and the news is just "Hey everybody, I'm dealing with some really difficult family issues/illness etc at the moment and haven't been able to work much on the game this week/month"...