Why I turned down the opportunity to become a YouTuber. Last year was a tremendous year. I grew over 130k followers on X, helping lead a campaign against DEI which was ruining gaming. Many people, including prominent YouTubers, told me I should launch a channel. I always said No, or if I were to start one, it would be about something else, like retro-gaming. I did this because I never wanted to dilute the message, or be seen as promoting my game or going for ad-money. On stream, when offered to promote my game, I would turn down the opportunity time and again, because I wanted the message to be about the problems in gaming. But that didn’t stop activists from attacking me for being a “grifter” and accusing me of doing this for $$$. If I had wanted to do this for money, I would have launched a YouTube channel and do streams, or launch a Patreon, or shill my game. I did none of this. I also never promoted my game or asked anyone to back it. In fact, we took down backer packs over a year ago (2023!) as we worked to incorporate all the new artwork we had developed in past years into a new demo. There is, in fact, no way to back the game in any way right now, and hasn’t been since we revamped the website. Despite these facts, I was slandered and accused of doing what I do here to fight DEI as a “gifted tactic.” This is a strategy known as “poisoning the well.” When your opponent is so hugely effective that you can’t fight them on logic, or the substance of their argument, you go after their character and slander, malign and try to get people to ignore them. Even some anti-DEI pundits picked up on this, and I was shocked that people I followed for years, perhaps out of jealousy and pettiness, started to join the faceless bandwagon of “poisoning the well.” They failed. What people say about me matters much less than the message…that DEI ruins art, ruins games, and is just thinly masked reverse racism that puts an entire segment of my friends, my co-developers, into a culture of fear for their jobs. That DEI must stop and be eliminated if we are to fix some of the biggest problems in AAA gaming today. And despite the false attacks, I continue to grow, and the message continues to go out there. Good. The work in games is happening, and people are talking openly about how DEI is ruining games, and gaming CEOs have noticed and confided in me that they don’t want DEI in their studios anymore. I’ll continue to promote the message. But it’s also time that I talk more about my game, including how to back it sometime in the future and support my work. I’ve learned that even when you go out of your way to not self-promote, they accuse and slander you anyways. I’ve decided I’m not going to hold back anymore, and that to continue the fight, having a strong base is essential, and so long as there is work to be done, I will be there until DEI is eliminated from gaming, and the world returns to sanity. And by delivering a great game that stands on these principles, that shows all the lessons of why caring about gamers matters and rejecting DEI matters, we win that way too. So thank you. Thank you for following me, and promoting the message and getting those voices heard. DEI is considered toxic now, and the anti woke movement has won huge gains in a very short amount of time. Thank you for ignoring the haters and activists and for giving me such a great platform to help in this very important battle, not just for the future of games, but for all of civilization. Everyone fights, nobody quits. And, in 2025, we rebuild!