I don’t think so, I think he got overwhelmed by the popularity of his game and that he couldn’t find the time to make the updates to the next level. Therefor he has build a reset to save him time to develop the next level.

If that so, it's a smart move but as you said it can destroy the game... Maybe a better idea to make that resetting less

Or maybe that was the point of the game from the start, but if it was then it was a really bad move to market it they did before the update as you described (I haven't played the game so I don't know.)

I think you should let the Dev know (in their website, social media, email or if it all fails by a negative Review) that you dislike this update... Maybe other people liked it but it's sad when an update of the game destroys every reason you played it for in the first place.

I mentioned you in my Daily Picks.