I'm Selling Out

 

On the evening of Wednesday July 23rd 2025, unannounced yet clear as rolling thunder, NSFW games as well as games with queer and LGBTQ+ themes began to disappear. My day job's work-week involves being on my feet and with the public Thursday to Sunday, so the last thing I wanted to do that Wednesday was scrub my index and move all my content somewhere new. The rest is history. Some people (like me) got lucky and just had their games de-indexed. Others had their games completely de-listed, accounts frozen and worse. It was a complete slap in the face to creators across the platform (especially in how poorly itchio communicated everything) and a huge reason my % to them will be sitting at a cool zero for a good while to come. To me the only power, the only voice I felt I had to contribute to this was pull the plug on my storefront completely, cut all traffic, etc, etc. I thought alternatives would crop up, that calling payment processors would get this resolved within weeks instead of months, that maybe my absence would do something. Ultimately this was some vain self-suffering nonsense bred from being raised Catholic.

So today, it is with great excitement, that I announce I am selling out.

Now let's be clear on finances here: I don't really make that much money on tabletop games. Digital Angel was my first "profitable" game purely on virtue that I didn't commission any art for it thus running me in the red (and even that only brought in some $250 in sales). However, as of this year my finances have gotten tighter as a result of various (very good and exciting) health endeavors that my insurance (which may be going up) refuses to cover despite it being in their listed benefits (a battle I've spent too many days on trying to win to count). While I'm by no means in dire straits, getting some extra moola from PWYW fun little games I release allows me to throw moola at other peoples fun little games or buy myself a burger when I realize I've been at a calorie deficit all week or go to a goth club or maybe (maybe) comfortably put some money into my savings (who'd have thought).

Re-opening my itch also gives me back a huge platform for networking and distribution. Much though I love my adorable little google drive, a well put together itch page gives an air of legitimacy to any who might see my work (and frankly makes file management on client side more manageable). It's an ecosystem I still participate in to some effect, I still want to promote other creators who (reasonably) are still on the platform and my absence hasn't done a whole heck of a lot except hurt my works and my ability to share them.

I've been reading a lot of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and if there's anything I've learned it's that there's a fine line between being righteous and needlessly self-sacrificing out of misplaced pride in one's values. So methinks I just need to get my grievances out here and enjoy being a saleswoman again.

And to be clear, my works will never stop being horny, and I'm now more determined than ever to never stop making games. Better to be a thorn in itch's side than a non-entity barely ticking down a fraction of a percent's percent in network traffic. Also like IDK I might try pushing my stuff a bit harder in the coming months cause I might be cooking... one step at a time though.

A very big thank you to my many friends and fellow creators that reminded me that money is indeed important and we live in a society (and also that selling out rocks). Truthfully (and vainly) for me it isn't even quite about the money (though the extra I was pulling in from itch really did make a difference for me, small as it was) - It was about being able to platform and distribute these works that were so important to me. Not being in that ecosystem honestly stunted a lot of my desire to build bigger and better things, and to a lesser extent has kept me too demoralized to keep blogging and today writing (today was rough). A friend of mine asked if I didn't have kids how do I have so little free time, and the true answer is that my kids are these works I make and these skills I hone. It's the memes I pass onto the next generation in favor of genes.

And I'm glad those kids are back out in the wild again ~

If you're a creator reading this, my hope is that maybe this can help give you permission to let yourself sell out a little bit. Being a little selfish is important, and ultimately the worst kinds of selfish people typically aren't the ones who agonize over whether they're being too selfish. You've only got this one life to live, so live it, get some money, try to get famous. Who knows, maybe you'll really make an impact along the way ~