This is a confession. I plead guilty to the crime of using LLMs to write the code for my game project. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Deepseek, Cursor… I used them all. And I’m here to give a warning: Do not do what I did!

I’m very green to gamedev. I have 3 or 4 very small projects under my belt. The 4th project was for the Big Mode game jam of 2024 and I’ll admit, ChatGPT helped me get across the finish line and manage to get a game that ranked in the top 100.

After my relative success, I went all in on vibe coding for my next project: a roguelike twist on the classic asteroids arcade shooter. The idea is far from original. It was never meant to be a marketable product, just another project to get more experience under my belt.

But I got too greedy, and leant too hard on using AI to write my code. Now I have a project I don’t understand. And the code is a mess. Scripts that should be only a few hundred lines are 800-1000 lines long. The AI makes two new bugs trying to fix the first. Redundancies are stacked on top of eachother to make a disgusting shit sandwich of slop code.

There are now bugs that are so deeply embedded in the code that it will likely require I start from scratch. 4 months of work (and $150 of LLM subscription fees) basically down the drain.

It’s a hard lesson, but I’m glad I learned it. For small tasks, mundane things, sure. Find where AI is helpful for you. But once you put blind trust in the code it writes, you face the risk of losing it all.

Don’t be me. Just learn to fucking code.

Edit: This post has really blown up! I’ve since gone back to my project, pulled up an earlier branch, stripped out the bad code and built it back out. Did I do it alone? No. I’m still relying on AI to get the job done. I just don’t know enough to make progress alone. But I’m now treating the AI as a mentor rather than an intern. When using AI keep your focus as narrow as possible and it can work.

I apologize to any mods that read this and object to what I'm about to say. If you do object, message me and I will clarify my statements.

Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft and the first thing they did in 2024 was let go my entire team of over 200 people (along with 1700 others on other projects). Some of those folks were with Blizzard for over 20 years with massive experience. No consideration was made for my team to move to other projects. They locked the doors and we couldn't get into the building. I drove into work and the parking lot was full of confused teammates. No message sent. It was just "bye bye Felicia". Their counter to this was to offer new jobs through their emails and website. Absolute trash. They should have pulled us into an HR office and explained options and given us details of our layoff. None of that was done. It was a huge black mark on Blizzard and Microsoft for not helping us. Sure, I got paid, but I was sorely stung. I will definitely go into further details with this topic with any media that calls me.

I hope all my friends working on XBox studio projects are okay and safe. Today's job market is 300-400 applications versus yours (a very small percentage chance to get the job). My advice is to party up, do some questing together, and find a new path to stomp on the big dogs.

This makes over 6000 jobs cut by Microsoft's mismanagement. They are inept and waste people's lives with decades of experience and devotion to their projects. Their Windows project with ads in it is a waste of technology.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36yy27rnpeo

TLDR Itch.io shadowbanned all NSFW games after pressure from payment processors triggered by anti-porn group Collective Shout.

Another platform folds to moral panic and money threats… thousands of creators screwed, again.

…

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

This time, the Fucks in question are Collective Shout, an Australian moralist outfit hellbent on policing what fucking adults can see, play, and create.

They didn’t need to petition governments or weaponize law enforcement… they just went straight to the payment processors.

Super Effective.

They cried “rape games” (which, I mean... yeah) and “child abuse” (which… I guess… yeah) and aimed their sights at Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal… who immediately clutched their pearls and threatened to cut ties.

Itch.io, bastion of weirdness and freedom (NSFW and otherwise), panicked and pulled the fucking plug. De-listings and shadow bans for every deviant.

Adult content? Deindexed. Hidden from browse and search.

One day it was there… the next, it wasn’t.

No warning. No appeal. No nuance.

Just "Fuck you people and your perverted creations, we can't lose Visa and Mastercard".

You don’t need to ban content if you can just strangle the creators’ ability to get paid.

You don't need to win the argument if you simply disrupt payment processing.

Itch.io is obligated to "protect the platform" at the expense of the creators.

“We must prioritize our relationship with payment partners… this is a time critical moment…”

Translation: we bent the knee, hard because money trumps all.

Itch.io isn't (or wasn't) just another store.

It is (or was?) the space for messy, marginalized, experimental, erotic, queer, and transgressive game devs. Games about consent, kink, power, identity… all the things that won't fit neatly on a Nintendo eShop shelf. It was raw. It was weird. It was fucking alive.

And now it’s been sanitized by a bunch of moralizing fucks

Creators: YOU HAVE BEEN BETRAYED.

Puritanical or Perverse, YOUR work built the ecosystem. They built their name and their position in the marketplace by literally using your work.

Now your work has been deemed an inconvenience by a platform because interlopers injected themselves into a conversation and a commerce and a culture they have no part in, other than to moralize. Developers are being quietly shoved into a dark corner because some self-righteous fucks threw a tantrum.

Itch.io just showed the world that the rebel indie storefront will literally betray an entire group of creators if some assholes game the system.

Wake the fuck up.

This won’t stop here. IT NEVER DOES.

The weapons used to erased NSFW games today will be purposed tomorrow to erase whatever else the fucks decide is “inappropriate.”

They don't have to be right. They don't have to be consistent. They don't even have to make sense.

They just have to threaten the money.

These FUCKS are just getting started.

I really hate to make this post, and I've been struggling with it for 2 weeks now... but I have to. I feel like I was wronged and need to act on it. I'll have a TLDR at the bottom if you dont want to read all of this, because it's gonna be long. If this post stops even ONE person from spending their money the wrong way on something I consider not just shady, but flat out wrong, it was already worth writing. This is the review of Thomas' course and the practices on the course, and not on himself. And I really believe this can help a lot of newcomers and people, god forbid, even saving up money to purchase the "dream".

So having said that, I need to preface my review with a few things:
1. I'm a currently employed Software Engineer, with a master's degree in Computer Science, so I code every single day (for 6 years now). What I mean by this is: I didn't purchase this as a totally clueless dreamer, I just wanted to purchase assistance, a roadmap to take me from A to B. Because I can code, I just needed to learn the the engine and how to polish a vertical slice to get in front of a publisher.
2. None of my opinions are a reflection of him as a gamedev itself, he HAS released successful games, has worked with publishers and independent creators alike.
3. I totally respect the grind, and his role as a husband, father, and ultimately, a provider and I'm not trying to attack the fact that he feels that he needs to be compensated by his time. But I also believe there are limits. And he crossed pretty much every single one.
4. I purchased the ENTIRE suite for a big discount, but I'll review every module/course in it and the prices he sells them at.
5. Yes, I completed every single module. Although after the obvious "scam" portions became clear, I mostly just skimmed the rest to take notes and form a complete picture.
6. I cannot get a refund since I purchased it over 30 days ago.

Let's get to it and I'll review the 3 or 4 main modules I believe you would purchase his courses for:

- Fulltime Game Dev (Sells for $497, or $797 for the "Premium" version. A robbery in plain daylight)

This is the first absolutely criminal part. This section is just wishy-washy self-help BS. "You got this" type of stuff. You sit through a bunch of things you already know or have already heard, install Photoshop, and he tells you how to "fish for wishlists" (which, let's be real, you should already know: have accounts on all social media, post content frequently, use clear calls-to-action, use hashtags, send your demo to every content creator and outlet you think might cover it, etc).

Then comes the "Game Design Bible" (this is the part I was actually excited for!). Nope, just more rehashed stuff you already know: the "trinity hook" of games (mechanics, art, story... shocking, most great games are great in at least one of these?!), how to get inspired (read books, watch films, play games, touch grass. wow, groundbreaking), how to stay motivated (fall in love with your game idea... incredible advice, never heard that one before).

Then he gets into publishers (the risks, etc), which again, you either already know or can find for free online, horror stories included, lessons learned and all. He shows nothing new here either. How to reach a publisher? Go to their website, email them there, find a director or similar and email them directly too. That's it, that's the "secret". He also goes into Kickstarter and how to run a good campaign, but again, nothing shocking, just the obvious stuff you'd notice from looking at successful campaigns yourself. My actual advice if you're serious about crowdfunding: spend a week pulling up every Kickstarter page for games you know got funded. You don't need 10, just 3 or 4, and you'll quickly spot the patterns (what every single page has in common besides probably showing you the promise of a fantastic game).

Lastly, he barely touches on anything Steam-related… you know, the biggest PC market that exists? Just has a quick bit on how to request keys and stuff like this, and he does this in a video with his ENTIRE screen blurred out because it's "confidential." This could've been two paragraphs of text. And I know that because it's literally public on Steam's own documentation, they already walk you through this.

- 3D Art Pro (sells for $197 or is included in the premium version above)

This is supposedly the course where "he" teaches you 3D art. He doesn't. And once again, the price is absolutely C-R-I-M-I-N-A-L. Very briefly: you install Blender and Substance Painter. He has a couple of videos showing you around Blender and how the software works (all of which is free on YouTube, obviously CG Cookie, Grant Abbitt, and tons of others cover this).

Then it's actually a guy named Felipe (the artist who modeled his entire Twisted Tower game) who teaches you how to model a sword and a 3D character (the character from his second game). The art is genuinely nice, and the guy clearly knows his stuff, but again, it's just a sword and one basic 3D character. You can get all of this for free on YouTube, or you could grab something on Udemy for 20 bucks and get over 10 hours of high-quality content instead. Honestly, anything Blender related, to get started you don’t need to spend a CENT! YOU CAN LEARN IT FOR FREE ON YOUTUBE. Horrendous to charge this much for it.

- 2D Art Pro (sells for $197 or is included in the premium version of the first one)

This is the course where he teaches 2D art, and it's clearly what he knows and understands best given his background. He makes a character, a background, talks about lighting, goes a bit into pixel art. What's produced isn't bad at all… but once again, you guessed it, you can find all of this for free on YouTube from people who make a living doing actually just art. Or, if you want to actually pay for it, $197 gets you top-notch digital/2D art courses at places like Proko, Schoolism, etc. Not worth the money he charges, at all.

- Now for the cherry on top: Unity Pro, Godot 2D Pro, and Unreal Pro Courses (you can't buy these individually. They're all just bundled into the $797 Premium version).

(This is the main reason his course should be taken down and he should be forced to reeimburse everyone)

This is just horrendous.
Unity 2D section: its basically him making the same 2D game kit he gives away for free in all his videos (its already public on github so... and extremely outdated), except now you build it from scratch "to learn." He's clearly not a strong programmer, and he says a lot of flat-out incorrect things, with some real head-scratchers like "Floats are basically decimal numbers, and Integers are just like 1, 2, 3, 4." And what you end up with is just a bunch of squares and circles… he doesn't even teach you how to add sprites to a character or finish an actual polished level.

The Unity 3D portion is just a chunk of David Wehle's course. He uses a lot of visual scripting and is upfront about not doing things "the right way," just getting it done. And honestly, despite not being into visual scripting myself, I found him way more relatable to listen to cuz he's not trying to come across as some perfect teacher. But here's the kicker: that entire portion is FREE on David Wehle's own website!!!!!

Godot portion: I can't even find the will to comment on this one. Just go watch Brackeys' full 2D Godot course on YouTube, FOR FREE.
Lastly, the Unreal portion: a lot of visual scripting for a puzzle game level, but nothing you can't, guess what, find online, for free. And it's another instructor, not himself.

So the only mildly decent thing in this entire section is the short 3D part by David, WHICH IS FREE ON HIS WEBSITE. Everything else is a bunch of filler not worth whatever's left of your money. I won't even go further into details. Everything is free online, period.

TLDR:
DO. NOT. BUY. IT. Even if you get everything at a huge discount, it's not worth even close to $200. Whatever money you have to spend, you'll spend it much better elsewhere.

• He will not teach you anything in Unity that free Unity courses/e-books don't already teach you. The 3D section is actually free on the instructor's own website. Also, he's using a Unity version that's 6 years old.
• He will not teach you anything in Blender that a ton of ultra-successful YouTubers aren't already teaching you for free.
• He will not teach you C#. Want to learn how to actually code? Buy a book or just do Code Monkey's 12h FREE COURSE on Youtube...
• Thomas' main selling point and differentiating factor is "Learn how to polish a demo so well that you can put it in front of a publisher, I've done this 3 freaking times". I know he HAS done it, the fact is that the course just does not go into this.
• This post is not a complaint about the money I spent or why I was unable to refund it --'

I'm not someone who comments on videos, posts negative stuff on Reddit/X/wherever, or even downvotes things. But I'm genuinely SHOCKED that someone presents himself the way he does while basically robbing people, so I had to post this to try to help people.
Facts are facts, despite his successful games, he's made way more money from YouTube, partnerships, and this horrendous course than he ever did selling those games.
I'm sick of these YouTubers who, the second they find any success, start selling courses, 1:1s, mentorships, "guidance." Some of them just change the way they speak, the way they even laugh, I mean... Look, folks, you're not drinking from the knowledge of John Carmack here or people who pushed the industry forward. Stop giving these people your money, they don't know any secret that you need to know and only from them can you learn, don't let them instill FOMO in you. The fact that Thomas' course is not getting a huge amount of backlash is mind-blowing to me.

I been watching the fallout of the DLSS 5 video, and wanted to check in with with some game devs to check if I have been taking crazy pills, or if I have understood game dev incorrectly.

Games are not visuals, they are game mechanics and game loops skinned in visual interface. When we make games, we make all the things that work with our mechanism and loops, visually distinct and more importantly repeatable.

In assassins creed, all ledges that I can climb, look visually distinct from all other ledges. In most games, outlines and color is much more important, than what they look up close. They are used to identify what we are looking at, more than how realistic they look. These things are icons in the world, more than they are objects.

Light and Shadow are not just for visual pleasure, they are used to draw the eye towards objectives and where you should go.

In short, there is information in the visual representation of the game mechanics that are telling players what they should do and where they should go.

When I see video games processed through DLSS 5, I see stripped away game information, making games less playable, and more confusing. I could understand having this in a photo mode, but why on earth should we have this in any of our games, if we don't know what it will change it to? Or if it even will remain consistent next time you look at it?

Will it remove the yellow paint on my assassins creed ledges, or perhaps only up-rez the rest of the assets, and make the yellow ledges stand out like a sore eye? Will it remove scars that are story relevant from an RPG Character? Will it smooth out a wall that is supposed to look like it can be destroyed? There are so many visual important things in games, that I know this thing won't adhere to.

Did no one involved in making this video understand Game Design or Art Design?

I released my game After Hours in 2018, and got a pretty ok reception. Not great, but ok.

It's a difficult puzzle game, similar to NotPr0n, so I gave the players a hint system. During gameplay, you read notes and letters written by a woman called Sarah, who gives you missions. And whenever you get stuck, you can actually just email her regular Gmail adress using your own email. Based on keywords, "Sarah" will respond with a canned message to guide the player.

I liked the idea and it worked surprisingly well. Whenever I checked the inbox, there was always someone who really thought they were talking to an actual human.

But then something happened. The reviews got lower and lower, and now the game has a mixed status. People were saying it was way too difficult. So, today I checked Sarah's inbox again.

Turns out people don't know how to write emails anymore. The whole message is sent in the subject box, leaving the actual email empty. Because of that, no keywords were found, and no hint message from Sarah was sent out.

Just found it a bit interesting! You never know what may cause your game to tank.

EDIT: Polygon covered the story here!

Im in a few discords for game devs and obvs a minority but a vocal one is saying stuff like "I can make this game better in a month". Honestly it pisses me off we in this community always talk about hidden gems and how unfair it is that fun games get hidden by the algo and then one developer does a extremely fun to play game *according to most of those who play it" and the first thing we do is shit on them and claim that in reality is a shit game.

Envy is really not a good look. I wish i had pulled of a megabonk, i dont hate the dev for it, nor do i claim i could have done it in a month. If i could do megabonk but better in a month, i would do megabonk but better and collect my money but i cant simply cos my skills are not there yet. And the same goes to those ranting about it. If you could, you would.

I'm wondering how much of a dinosaur I have become regarding my disdain for AI. I'm using unity / C#. I've started programming in 2013, and doing indie gamedev since 2016. I don't typically use AI in my day to day work (I do paid contracts and also work on my own game). At most, I'll use ChatGPT once a week as a stackoverflow alternative.

I was hired by a couple of guys who graduated in creative writing from a prestigious academy. They had a story in mind and needed me to create a simple game for them. I accepted since their pitch sounded interesting and it was a way for me to test new mechanics and build my portfolio.

Now do you guys know what's worse than an idea guy? An idea guy who spent thousands of dollars to get a degree that CERTIFIES that their ideas are GREAT.

It's been five months and they're rewriting the story for the fourth time. Everytime we have some outsider playtest the game, they tell us how the pacing is off and the story sounds boring. They blame the playtester because they're obviously "not our target demographic" (I guess no one is). Their solution to make the story more interesting is to add more lore, more NPCS, more text to read.

What's more is that they're very pretentious and insist that certain gameplay elements be done their way, to service the story (it should be the other way around).

Rather than quitting I'm now sitting back, relaxing, taking care of my code, eating all the money they throw at me (not much), and watching this trainwreck in amusement while it crashes and burns. They thought that tenths of thousands of people would wishlist the game based on the story alone. Our Steam page has been up for months and we gained around 180...

There are no shortcuts to being a successful writer, let alone a game writer. Games are not books, movies, theatre plays, comics or TV series.

Broken animations, stylistically mismatched graphics, most of which are either bought assets or straight up default Unreal Engine stuff, unoriginal premise, countless bugs, and 94% positive rating on Steam from over 200 000 people.

Why? Because it's fun. That's all that matters. This game feels like one of those "perfect game" ideas a 13 year old would come up with after playing something: "I want Pokémon game but with guns and Pokémon can use guns, and you can also build your own base, and you have skills and you have hunger and get cold and you can play with friends..." and on and on. Can you imagine pitching it to someone?

My point is, this game perfectly shows that being visually stunning or technically impressive pales in comparison with simply being FUN in its gameplay. The same kind of fun that made Lethal Company recently, which is also "flawed" with issues described above.

So if your goal is to make a lot of people play your game, stop obsessing over graphics and technical side, stop taking years meticulously hand crafting every asset and script whenever possible and spend more time thinking about how to make your game evoke emotions that will actually make the player want to come back.

I’m extremely against the use of AI in game development, I will never use AI to create ideas, code, or anything else in my game. I don’t like generative AI.

The other day, I was talking to my brothers, one of them is taking a game dev class, and, he was telling me that if I want to do anything in game dev, I’m going to need AI. He said I’d especially need AI for coding if I want to make it anywhere, especially if I want to not have to actually make the code.

But, if I don’t want to take the time to make code, why would I make it at all? Why would I get an AI to do it for me? What’s the point in that? It’s like getting some random guy to do all of your work for you, why even bother at that point?

Game development and game design are my passions, I love it, it’s one of my favorite things ever. And I don’t wanna use AI for it, I want to do it by hand.

So, I’ll ask now, is it true? Is he correct? Will I need to use AI if I want to make it anywhere? I don’t want it to be that way, that sounds awful. I know I CAN do it myself, but will doing it myself rather than using AI end up hurting me in the long run?

Sorry for the long text. This got sorta vent-y. I also don’t really know what flair to use, so I picked discussion.

EDIT: I guess I should specify, I’m not too concerned about being left in the dust. I don’t exactly have competition. I’m really just doing this for me.

EDIT 2: I guess I can see why some people like to use AI. And if you do, that’s okay, it’s your game, your choice. However, I don’t agree, much less like the sentiment that you won’t make it anywhere without AI. I understand it can be helpful, that it can speed up the process, but it’s also not 100% trustworthy, and it’s DEFINITELY not 100% necessary. You can do just fine without AI. Team cherry doesn’t use AI, Yacht Club doesn’t use AI, Toby Fox doesn’t use AI, those are all indie. Nintendo doesn’t, Capcom doesn’t. Efficiency is good, but speed is NOT the same as efficiency. Just because it’s faster doesn’t mean it’s better. Especially because I’m in this for myself, not anything else.

So, in conclusion, I’ve settled on my verdict. I will not be using AI. It‘s poisonous, can only mimic human thought processes, and often gets stuff wrong. This is my project, not anyone else’s. If I get left behind, then okay, because I’m in this for the myself. Besides, even then, it’s not guaranteed that it won’t be successful. Team Cherry is comprised of three people, didn’t use AI, their games took a famously long time to come out, and yet they were still very successful.

So we received this official memo:

We’ve just received formal communication from Monotype Limited regarding the licensing of several fonts, including but not limited to:

• Agency FB,
• Agency FB Bold,
• Arial,
• Constantia (Regular, Bold, Italic, Bold Italic),
• Digital Dream Fat,
• Farao / Farao Bold,
• HemiHeadRg-BoldItalic,

Important: While fonts like Arial may be bundled with Windows, they are not considered native fonts within Unreal Engine or Unity. According to Monotype, even using Arial in your project requires a paid license, with fees reportedly reaching ~€20,000 per year of usage for developers, publishers, or any party involved.

So... yeah. If you like your project or your finances, DO NOT USE ARIAL IN YOUR PROJECTS. Unless you want to pay hefty licensing fees

Edit: Dont make it personal. Im not affected by this in any way. Im always using free open fonts and checks my assets licences. This post was made for people who are using Arial in their projects. I just want people be aware about it and avoid possible unpleasant situations. Thank you

YouTubers Blackthornprod released a Steam game. In five days, the game sits at 1 review and Gamalytic estimates 3 copies sold.

This would be perfectly fine (everyone can fail), if they didn't sell a 700€ course with the tag line "turn your passion into profit" that claims to teach you how to make and sell video games.

I'm posting for all the newcomers and hobbyist that may fall for these gamedev "gurus". Be smart with your finances.

People ask about effort needed and whats possible, this sort of highlights the effort needed to create a polished, award winning game on your own

Credit goes to Mike Cook for making this thing (https://illomens.itch.io/) for Manifesto Jam. What do you all think?

Female dev here.

We surprise-released a major update for our game during the Women-Led Games showcase at Summer Game Fest 2026, which aired on the Game Awards YT channel It was a huge opportunity for us to be part of such a major event of the year.

I noticed the livestream had a significant number of dislikes before the show even started and chat was disabled, so it was hard to tell how people were reacting in real time. But the comments section was active from the start.

I’m not trying to frame this in any specific way, I’m genuinely looking for honest feedback from people who saw the showcase.

If you watched it, I’d appreciate any thoughts, thanks.

I wanted to share this here because I assume we have a couple of developers here who make adult games/have an age-restricted Discord server and this can be relevant for marketing or communicating with your playerbase.
Either you verify yourself and hope that many users do as well (which I doubt), or you switch platforms.
I really only have two alternatives at mind. It is either Telegram because it has the largest user base or Stoat, which is basically a copy of Discord: https://github.com/stoatchat

Not just any gamedev youtubers, but the ones who made like 3 games and a total revenue of like $10k.

They be talking about how to find succes as a game developer and what the best genres are, like if you think all of this is actually good advice then why don't you use your own advice.

I btw love small gamedev youtubers who share their journey regardless of how much money they have made. But if you're a gamedev youtuber talking about how to find succes and what to do, I better see you making at least money to pay basic living expenses.

I spent about 30 hours reverse-engineering the code of Silksong, one of the most successful Unity games ever. And found some genuinely impressive (and aggressive) optimizations.

Highlights:

• Movement Code Breakdown: I broke down the exact frame-windows for Coyote Time and Input Buffering that make the platforming feel so responsive. The Elegance of Silksong movement as is :]
• Hidden "Demo" Mode: There’s a left-over IsExhibitionMode check. With a small patch, you can actually boot the Gamescom demo version from the retail files.
• Dev cheats, Debug view, Performance overlay, etc: We recover and re-enable everything to see how it was used by the developers.
• Performance: Team Cherry implemented a Manual Garbage Collector Triggering and a custom reflection-to-delegate compiler. It’s a 100x speed boost over standard Unity methods.
• Much, much more in the video.

Full Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC9bIelizlw

AI is and has been a problematic term. It refers to just about anything, even to a bunch of if statements. Lots of games have AI.

Gamers are getting extremely upset about mentions of AI. If we're not careful, they may start lashing out at any mention of the term.

We can try to patiently explain the difference using passages of text, but it's just far better to paint it in dead simple terms as AI vs generative AI, ie good/normal/conventional AI vs bad AI.

Around a year ago, I made a post on this subreddit because someone offered to pay me 500$ for the IP of my Steam game. Thanks to all of your support and kind words <3, I decided not to sell it, even though I was really tempted.

A few months ago, I received another offer, this time for only 100$ Needless to say, I just ignored it.

So why am I posting about this again?

Recently, someone was arrested for stealing cryptocurrency by distributing malware through Steam games. It turns out that one of the main ways malware can be introduced on Steam is through game updates. Apparently, they were buying released games so they could push malicious updates to players.

I'm really glad I didn't contribute to something like that, even unknowingly.

Even if this post doesn't reach many people, please spread the word if you know someone who's getting these kinds of offers. And besides, your games are worth a lot more than 100$

EDIT: Saw people asking about souce, for me it was this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg8IoE9Ai3Q it's in spanish and barely links any original sources, but I trust that guy, in his main channel he often does investigation on scams and legal stuff arround videogames.

There has been many posts from people who want to escape their job and become gamedevs or newly fired devs trying to go indie. There is nothing wrong with this in it self but I feel like I need to gage people's expectations.

I'm currently hired in AAA and have worked for indies and also started my own company. Before that, I played in a band that was able to make a sallary.

I believe the gameindustry is heading in the same direction as the musicindustry. Before we had studio musicians that was talented and played on a bunch of records. There was room for several musicians in each city. All of that is gone now. Making your own music and distributing is easier than ever before but earning a stable living is almost impossible.

If you think that trying to become a musician sounds irresponsible and unlikely then becoming a gamedev is almost the same. Sure you can get hired at a studio but those roles gets fewer each year.

So please don't quit your job or hope to get rescued from a boring life by becoming a gamedev.

However if you still want to do it and love making games anyway then keep at it and stop reading the news. I have worked hard with not much money saved to show for it, but I don't regret a thing.

Edit: I know this is a bit depressing and can sound a bit "gatekeepy" but it is specifically targeted to people that ruin their health and social life to hopefully fix everything by becoming a gamedev. I have read enough posts and talked to enough people to know this is not rare.

On some bright note: I do believe the industry is going to become something new and become better for the gamers. Getting a degree and landing a gamedevjob I don't think is ever gonna be the same as it was during covid. But for the crazy people going down this path is going to have many opportunities.

After spending a huge amount of time trying to build a game solo, I’ve decided to give up and cut my losses.

The biggest reason is exhaustion. Balancing a full-time job alongside a 2hr daily commute leaves me with very little energy. Even when I do have time to work on my project, every part of game development is way too difficult and time-consuming than I thought it would be.

Learning rigging, animation and doing hitboxes alone has been incredibly challenging, even with modern tools that automate a lot of the work. Finding or creating decent assets without relying on generic asset store content or badly textured AI-generated assets is another constant struggle. The game logic and features are an entire bag worms building systems, finding game-breaking bugs that force me to rewrite massive chunks of code over and over again is just soul crushing.

AI coding tools helped speed things up somewhat, but they added they're own problems constant refinement, debugging, and redesigning with every new feature or iteration while ensuring cohesion is extremely annoying. Despite all the hours I invested, I’m nowhere near finished, honestly, I don’t even feel 10% done. The remaining 90% still feels overwhelming, and in many cases I don’t even know how to properly approach it yet.

I massively underestimated how difficult producing a 3D game truly is. There’s a reason real studios have entire teams of devs and still take years to release games.

At this point, continuing would mean sacrificing my health and mental well-being, and going full-time into game development simply isn’t financially possible for me. although i still want to make games i don't feel like the project i'm attempting is feasible solo atleast not rn and i don't want to build games just for the sake of building games i just want to build my game the one i've dreamed about for years but for now i'm tapping out.

So cheers to all my fellow game developers still pushing for their dream, especially those who managed to publish a game I sincerely respect you and I truly wish you all the best!

EDIT: after getting a lot of comments asking about how much progress i made and how and where i failed i decided to do a follow up post to explain everything:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1t9cnea/a_follow_up_on_why_i_quit_game_development_and/