The best way for him to avoid that is to listen to the community and update Empires frequently, every 3-6 months. Even if it's just a couple of new maps and some tweaks.
Before 2.0, patches would come every 2 weeks. During the tests, patches would come every week. Not sure what the plan is for patches at the moment but I don't think you should worry about them... Though, we all think he deserves a break for now :D
do you pay any attention to the forums? the beta tester group os for permanent long term testing. as in more RC's. we may see a RC36, we may not. I woudlnt be surprised if the next beta version starts at RC1 again
"RC" stands for "Release Candidate", which is a beta version so close to being feature-complete and bug-free that the developers think it's good enough to be released. For 1.08/2.0 Krenzo thought that RC7 was very close when he released it to the forum community. You know how close to the truth that turned out