Updates: I am writing this immediately after waking up from four hours of sleep because I want it to go out to my itch followers while I still HAVE itch followers. There may be any number of developments that have happened since that I am not aware of. I'll have to get to them second. Please read the previous post for context first if you haven't.

Edit: To those following me here, I appreciate your commitment to party till the walls cave in, but how the fuck are you finding me? The game is delisted! Also of course, be sure to follow on FurAffinity as well if you haven't. Probably won't be around here much longer.

Also wow, watching the games I've bought here slowly flicker out in my library like patches of reality in the Neverending Story is...dark. Soon, only a vast emptiness of "game suspended" pages will remain.

Also at this point, just about everyone is telling Visa to get bent.

The game pages on Itch are still up, obviously. My account continues to exist. The shadowban continues.

There is no way to know for sure how long this will last, or what the verdict will be on my page, but I am operating off the assumption that it will be pulled, which I think is a fair estimate.

Which is why I will repeat the heading of this post: I need as many people as possible to subscribe over on SubscribeStar. Losing Itch means losing half my monthly income. Yesterday, before all this started, I was at about 154 subscribers on SS. To patch the hole, accounting for fees and whatnot, I need at least 100 additional subscribers. I'm currently sitting at 160, so 94 to go. This is at a bare minimum: I have "runway" as they say for a few months, but medium to long term I can't continue operating without at least this much.

However, it's worse than that. I basically had a two-mode financial/income model. First, support on SS and a modest but steady flow of continued purchase of previous games brought in enough to cover basics and have a little breathing room on a monthly basis while I was developing the next game. But second, like a farmer, I would (as far as this second mode was concerned) work for "no" money for a while, coax a crop to harvest, and then publish a game and get very large (for me) payoff over the course of a few months, which I would then squirrel away and slowly sip from in case of emergency as I worked on the next chapter.

Do you see the issue? Even if I can stabilize the monthly enough to survive, without itch there will be no harvest. I will release chapter 3 to...nothing. Subscribers get it for free, as they should.

And it's even worse than that. Half the point of Itch was its network effect. People would just be browsing and see a CS game. Not going to happen anymore. People would buy another horny game, see CS in their recommendations, and buy it too (I got a little bump any time any new nsfw game came out). Not going to happen anymore. I have built up a network of my own of over 4000 followers on itch. Followers that see update posts. Followers that show up when the game comes out and buy it. How many of those are going to follow me over to Furaffinity or here? Probably not all.

So, this boils down to one thing. I am going to ask all of you, if you have the money, to do something you should never, ever do.

I'm going to ask you to pre-buy a video game.

If you want to play Chapter 3, "buy" it now by subscribing for a month. Because if enough people don't in the next few days/weeks, it probably won't happen. Tell any friends/enemies/family/etc you have that you know were also interested that they need to do the same. If you have any meaningful social media following on spaces that would care/be interested in these games, make a post. Get the word out, because Itch just silenced us all.

And let me be crystal clear, I can't guarantee shit on this. Making games is hard, and it's going to be harder with this added stress. I'd put my chances of finishing at pretty high, 80-90%, given my motivation, character and previous experience. But life, including my life, is chaotic. All I can do is the best I can manage. That's why I've doggedly avoided any king of pre-buy in the past. But we're past that now. We're into slimy Kickstarter territory thanks to the hell that is 2025. If you want CS 3 to happen, "buy" it now. Simple as that.

And of course, if you can afford to stick around long term, even better! Again, I need at least 94 more of you.

How many people will see this? How many people will actually sub? No idea. But again, I have about 4k followers on here. Presumably they all want Chapter 3. If we're optimistic and assume only 1k of that is dead accounts, and of the remaining 3k 2k are willing and able to go through the process of signing up and subbing, that's $20k (a little less after fees), which should be plenty to secure the completion of the game. Maybe they won't show up. Maybe more will (I got much more than my subscribers buying GT on release). Tell people. Spread the word. Subscribe.

That said, I'd also like to outline my situation, and why this is all...a bit dire.

For at least five years now, possibly a bit more, I've had "fatigue." NOT Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, as far as I can tell, just a fatigue I can't pin down no matter how many things I have tested or lifestyle things I try to shift. It's physical, but triggered by certain kinds of stress in a really weird way. If you tell me "Hey, go dig a ditch in 80 degree weather for four hours", no problem (as long as it's alone and without any pressing deadlines). I actually was doing something similar to this earlier this year. On the other hand, if you shove me into a typical work environment with nightmare customers, boss, co-workers, constant fear of getting fired, rules that change every week etc, I struggle to last more than a few hours.

Five ish years ago when it started, pre-pandemic when I actually had two regular jobs, it was only a bite out of my normal working ability. Maybe 20% of the energy I could have spend racking up hours gone. But it's gradually become worse and worse, and it's at the point now where I'm not sure I could even work a normal "shit job" any more (retail, fast food, etc), which is all I can get.

I really, really didn't want to share this. I don't like talking about medical stuff in general, I was worried people would eye-roll as they often do ("what a baby, that's not a real thing, just stop being lazy"), I was worried I would hurt people's faith in my ability to finish the game. The games have been a godsend, because there are no co-workers (except for a few great people that help here and there) or bosses, and if I'm having a bad day I can just work less that day, and more the next. I'm fairly confident I can continue work on the game as I have been, assuming the money is there. And just in general, I didn't want people to think I was farming it, pity partying for cash.

But things are bad now. Gotta put the cards on the table. And we'll see where we end up.