I won’t mention which game and creator this is (a game on itchio), as I don’t want witch hunt here. It’s an indie dev after all. If you saw the post "I watched an artist evolve from producing rough art to delivering elite, top-tier artwork” with NSFW content (the one with oversized boobies), then you know what I mean.
What makes me sad and angry is, that I pointed out it looks like Ai was involved in the art creation. The author of the post replied that only background and 10% of the art was created with Ai, and that the game is 50 hours long. Feels very much like it was the developer himself? After I replied with this is problematic, because this was explained only after I mentioned it. There was no Ai mentioned in the itchio page or the post.
What followed was, the post got deleted. I reached out to the Lemmy user and asked in a private message why it was deleted. Shortly after then the Lemmy account are got deleted too.
What to make out of this? I was not toxic in anyway and didn’t saw any toxic comments from others. I didn’t want an indie developer to disappear, if the work is honest and the game is fun. Just don’t hide things. How should a situation like these be handled in the future?
Tough choice. And tagging things like [Self-Promo] or [Recommendation] will get annoying.
I’d hate to say it like this, and I have an incredible amount of bias as someone who dabbles in indie game development, but allowing self-promotion posts tends to bring out some of the most hustle-culture indies there are. Even when contained to a weekly thread, it can get funky.
Plus I like the general not-advertisement-heavy atmosphere so far.