Well, I have no evidence to dispute Vibri's words, but they are both an official team member and a personal friend of Andrew, who has stated the importance of getting a good reception to the pilot in greenlighting more. So making sure everything looks neat and tidy and like morale is high is part of her job, along with being in her best interest.

That being said, I'm not suuuuuuuper worried about the pilot's chances. It's being produced by a studio whose name is all over the internet, with Toby Fox voicing the protagonist, the website getting updated, the new discord server with all its exclusive content and events, fans already prepped to overlook worker abuse, and the continued better-reception of Beyond Canon. It's probably not gonna be like Hiveswap act 2, which released right in the middle of Homestuck^2 disillusionment and not long before the Sarah Z drama. Regardless of what I think should've happened, it seems the ultimate public perception of the UHC mess is a "Samus Returns" situation, where the company C&D's a fanwork that could theoretically compete with them right before announcing their new thing. Which we know isn't true, but it's an explanation people will understand even if the truth is way stupider. Point is, it's imminently survivable for the brand and if the HS pilot ends up failing, I don't think it'll be because of Gio's blogposts.

I'm much less-worried about the pilot becoming a full series anyway, and more about how the production on that series would go. Mendrano's studios don't sound like fun places to work, but they do consistently finish their work and release it, and it'd be pretty damning if Homestuck was the exception by going the way of TOG/WPNY/Viz/SAHcon(?) and exploding midway through the process.