I wish I was writing to you with better news, but unfortunately, my life has been nothing but a cluster lately.

I feel like probably many of you are aware already, but because of demands from payment processors, itch is undergoing a lot of sudden changes, deindexing, deletions, and is introducing new content requirements. There's not much point in me (horribly) explaining all the details myself as so many people are talking about it. Some great resources to get more details on exactly everything that's going on:

• On itch.io, payment processors, and the developers and creatives affected
• So, The Credit Card Companies Are Coming For Our Indie Games Too
• Digital Book Burning – How Visual Novel Devs can Mitigate Harm
• Major Indie Marketplace Itch.io Shadowbans NSFW Content, Trans Authors Impacted
  

I hope I don't need to explain why this is horrible in and of itself. The idea that card companies have the right to control what we can and cannot buy is terrifying and draconian. Especially since the group that convinced Visa and Mastercard to push harder for these things specifically on game sites is staunchly anti-porn and anti-LGBTQIA+ (and anti-rights, let's be honest).

It's really important that we fight back against this. There's currently a large campaign to call payment processors going on that seems to at least be causing them visible stress:

(link to Bluesky post)

And there's also an ACLU petition specifically targeting MasterCard that you can sign.

So please consider doing what you can to help the fight. I'm really glad that people have taken up arms so staunchly against this. I just hope that some of our voices can be heard and make a difference. We have to keep doing what we can to fight back.

In the midst of this, itch put up new vague "content guidelines." Admittedly, these seem to grouped under 1) adult games, and 2) adult games specifically taking payments, which none of my games are, but in the first wave of deindexing and suspension of games, free games and non-NSFW games were hit, too, so at the moment, it's extremely unclear how, to what extent, and on which games these are going to affect.

At the moment, none of my games have been directly affected. And I'm not going to be taking them down myself, as I refuse to go down without a fight. (I have basically zero visibility off of itch, so it really feels like I would simply disappear into obscurity if I were forced to leave all storefronts.) However, OW would very much not be acceptable under the new content guidelines if they're enforced against non-adult free games. So I'm kinda just waiting to see what's going to happen...

Because of this, in the meantime, I thought it would be a good idea to create a backup spot for my games and updates. I decided to go with Patreon for this, because it's quite easy to get started there, I like the variety of different posts they let you make, they let you upload large files and attachments to posts, and it allows people to subscribe and get updates in their email. THIS WILL BE A COMPLETELY FREE PATREON. It has no "tiers." Everything is completely free and publicly available. However, you can subscribe to it for free if you want to stay updated on when I release new things, make updates to my games, write new devlogs, and share new art in the future. (Kinda similar to "following" me here on itch.)

You can find and subscribe to my new Patreon here.

Currently, the only posts I've made there are ones for all my games with downloads. Though I want to continue with anything else I'd like to back up, like my art and the various other things I've made throughout the years. And once all the backing up is done, I'd like to use it as like a central storage and update point for my stuff moving forward, like for all my future projects, updates, and art. I will still ofc share these things on my other accounts, too, and here, so long as I still can, but with how fickle platforms are lately, it just makes sense to have one central place you can always find news and updates from me. I figure something like this might be nice also for those who don't use any social media but who'd still like to stay updated on my stuff.

So yeah, if anything happens here on itch, and there's nothing I can do to fight it at all, at least I will have the games backed up on Patreon so they'll still be accessible. I didn't really want to make a static site as I already have so little visibility that it'd just feel like throwing it out into the ether and watching it sink into nothingness lol. That type of thing would probably work better for those with much bigger followings (especially off of itch). Also, no free site plans anywhere would give me the type of space I need to natively host all my game files, so I'd then need to find download services and go through all that rigmarole... At least with this way, I feel like I can keep some sense of community with subscriptions and ability to easily put out updates to keep it more relevant.

As if all of this weren't enough (because it never is...), I haven't mentioned it on here yet, but my dad suddenly passed away last month from a heart attack and I'm still reeling from that both emotionally and physically and have been in a horrible mental space the last weeks. I flew back to the states to help out and be with family for a while, but I'm back in my apartment now and it's been really tough and even worse on my mental health than I thought. And now with all this on top, I'm really starting to spiral. So please forgive me if I'm just not all there mentally and haven't been able to update things or put out much (Broomtail is still on hiatus until I get the heart to start drawing it again, for instance). I'm just really struggling right now.

Anyways, that's all for now. I hope that we can have some glimmer of better news soon. Thank you as always for supporting me and my games. And please consider subscribing to my Patreon! It would mean a lot to me knowing people want to follow my stuff no matter what might end up happening here.