There was a point when Mike was planning on not updating the itch.io version PERIOD and just telling people to rebuy it on Steam. Was responding to your "springboard" comment because he was absolutely doing that originally.
yeah definitely still kinda sucky. I personally don't mind it too much because I was already going to rebuy it on Steam. But at least now it's getting updates except for features that would be really difficult to implement into the itch.io version for legitimate reasons instead of just "lol not supporting this version anymore." The fact he listened to criticism at all is nice.