They did exactly what you suggested! The relationship with the users never went dark. They kept up with bug fixes, and kept feeding new features at a more than acceptable pace. [Edit: Here's the pace of their status updates, as evidence at https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/?f=flair_name%3A%22FFF%22 ]
I didn't quite believe that Uncle Bob's lessons worked in the real world, but if the Wube team is sold on them, that's about as good as an endorsement as I'll ever get.