#hope this doesn't completely unbalance the entire community. which it might. we can't know yet

[damnation-if]

anyway this is going to have a slightly different Mood than my previous post but i’ve just woken up to hear about people. leaking early access builds of the games of some of my very good friends and i couldn’t be more disgusted.

if you’re not aware (i say, assuming that the people doing this actually don’t know and are not simply of the belief that it doesn’t matter because authors don’t deserve any money, which is highly possible) early access is one of the easiest things an author can give as a benefit on patreon - not everybody has the time or energy or opportunity to provide bonus content every month, and if you drive authors away from giving early access, you will put a lot of them in a position where they CANNOT offer ANY benefits at all.

there will still be some readers who are happy to support their favourite authors even with no benefits, so you’re not going to stop authors having patreons, if that’s your particularly spiteful motivation. you’re just going to make it so that nobody gets to see the game early. hooray... you win?

i’ve spent a lot of this year struggling to keep myself from becoming homeless due in large part to my physical disabilities, and the thought that once i have enough of the game out i could maybe open a patreon and provide early access to supporters for perhaps a few extra dollars a month so that i could afford to buy dinner once in a while or god forbid eat some dessert on a bad day is one of the main hopes i’ve been holding close to my chest to help keep me going when i’ve really wanted to give up on everything. now i don’t know if i can do that anymore because it’s clear that people in this community can’t be trusted.

i hope anyone who has partaken of leaked early access versions is proud of themselves for the probably irreparable damage they’ve caused to the trust relationship between authors and readers in this community :/