FTR, this is also why *I* am staying away from it. Writing is great, and writing in a group can be even greater; but not in the toxic environment this horde of angry grandpas has single-handedly managed to create.

My impression is that this situation is/was/will be fairly common (let's not dig too much into the reasons why...) but for Tekumel the effects are worse than for other RPG games, as Tekumel is well known for the massive amount of detail and preparation that it takes to be ready to run or play a game, so the idea that, while you're studying the setting and getting ready, something bery unexpected may happen to/from the owner of the game, undermining a fair part of your efforts.
This instability may put off more people interested on Tekumel than other games.
Hopefully the people in charge will realize this and send more messages about stability and ability to present longer term plans and stick with them.

I can only speak for myself, but I can say a little about why I find Tekumel so intimidating.

While many of his words and language may be unique or obscure, Tolkien strikes a "everyman" vibe with me whereby if you mention elves and dwarves and hobbits I pretty much know what the are supposed to represent. Anyone who has read any of a long list of fantasy stories can jump into traditional D&D and almost right away have a feeling of knowing what is going on and what monsters are being encountered.

Barker's stuff is creative and imaginitive and just plain weird. I played in a campaign of EPT back in in the 1970's but never felt capable of running one even though the rules were very D&D-like. I read a lot of the old Tekumel articles in Strategic Review and Dragon and felt overwhelmed by the names and spellings of the places and characters. I own Man of Gold and Flamesong and could never get more than a chapter or so into either. The names, races, and so on, just never felt intuitive to me. I played in a couple of "play by post" Tekumel games but my feeling of comfort never quite built the way I had hoped. I still own my old TSR boxed set for EPT and dig it out occasionally when I want to get inspired for something unusual and non-traditional.

I am in awe of Tekumel but still not comfortable with it.

I guess that knowing that the Tekumel detail is out there makes me think that I ought to be familiar with it in the same way that knowing that Middle-earth is so complex makes me think that I ought to have a decent understanding of it if I want to run a game of that. But Tekumel is less intuitive so I never feel like I "get there" in my learning process.

Does that make any sense?