Let’s chit-chat about THE DERELICTS SITUATION: A Timeline and Reality Check.

Picture it (really fighting hard to not include a ‘Sicily’, IYKYK):
The community starts posting the usual stuff: “scam,” “dead game,” “ghost dev,” all the greatest hits. If you hang out in the Early Access space, you’ve seen it a thousand times. Silence creates paranoia; paranoia creates drama. People assume the worst because there’s nothing else filling the void.

From their view? Radio silence looks like abandonment.
From my view? There was burnout, life, and shitty communication choices that complicated things even more.

It’s never just one thing, and that’s the point.

Where’s the line between “assume the worst” and “accept literally any behavior because the creator apologized”?
Where’s the line between “life happens” and “you made promises and took money and then vanished without a single update for months”?
Where’s the line between support and enabling?

These aren’t questions about Derelicts.
They’re questions about the entire creator ecosystem – Patreon, Early Access, Kickstarter, all of it. Derelicts just happens to be a clean example because the pattern is clean-cut and I had a birds eye view of the situation. Not because it’s the only one, and definitely not because it’s the worst one. (Anyone who’s backed more than two creators has seen some version of this mess, HELLO BACKERS OF DEAD MATTER.)

Burnout is real.
Life throwing you curveballs is real.
But so is the responsibility that comes with charging people monthly.

Supporters aren’t entitled to perfection, but they are entitled to communication.
Creators aren’t required to be machines, but they are required to show up, even minimally, or hit pause when they can’t.

This isn’t about blaming someone for going through shit.
It’s about recognizing that someone saying “I was struggling” explains the delay – but it doesn’t magically absolve the silence.

Before I get into specifics, remember: I’m using one situation to show how these dynamics play out across tons of creator–supporter relationships. Swap the names and half of you could paste in a dozen other projects you’ve backed.

Upfront:

I like Romain! We’ve had good conversations, hung out, and bullshitted on VoIP for hours. I think he genuinely wants to make this game and believes in it. (Or at least I hope he does, if not, he’s either a fucking superb actor or I’m a moron.) I don’t think this is a The Day Before situation. And this isn’t to trash him as a person. As a person, he’s terrific!

But when people are paying money based on promises, the pattern matters more than the intentions. Derelicts is just one example I can actually walk you through, because the pattern hits every standard beat of the creator–supporter tension we see across the entire ecosystem. (And I had more access than most.)

How This Started

I first became aware of the project back in November of 2021, so I popped into Discord to observe. I opened up a convo with Romain in January of 2022, when I started offering bits of advice on handling things like Steam forums, Patreon, and Discord backend, and became an admin on the Derelicts server back in May of 2022.

July 2024: Romain and I partnered up. I’d run the Discord and Patreon, bridge the community and development, and get early access and info to share with backers. We reworked his Patreon (which was basically hemorrhaging keys alongside promising tons of info/updates) to something more modest.

2024: At first, it worked. We had some Q&As posted to Hashtag. I was genuinely excited about where this was going. From the end of July to late August, I handled all Patreon posts and pushed out ACTUAL INFO to supporters and fans: Q&As, images, and more.

After that, getting a hold of him was basically like pulling teeth: he spent most of September and October communicating with me sparingly and not touching his social platforms. I get that lives happen, and social life is wonderful to have, but a quick status report is not too much to ask for at all. I managed to squeeze out a Patreon post in both October and November by piecing together a screenshot with small bits of info.

The intermittent Discord responses or calls were enough to show me that he was alive and working – at least telling me he was working– on the game, but it was doing jack shit to get news or updates out to the community or the Patreon subscribers. Discord mods were also fielding questions about the quality of the news/updates: why had we gone from interesting trailers of log flumes and playing with a pal to looking at rocks and environmental clutter. And, of course, blips of silence.

Early 2025: January/February and the BULK of March, I received no info about the game. We spoke sporadically through Discord PMs. Because the Derelicts and Hashtag Patreon have an audience overlap, I posted to my Patreon (free link, just log in to a free Patreon account) to give people my two cents on pausing their support, especially if they were hurting for cash. (I also shared the article with him directly.)

This is the slippery slope for a ton of creators: intention stays high, communication collapses, billing keeps running, and supporters start writing fan fiction about the apocalypse because they hear nothing. (Or hate mail, or publish hit lists.)

A kneejerk response, when their schedule finally clears up a bit, is to assume that they can hit the ground running into the same level of content they were producing pre burnout/abduction/chaos. (This ends up being a good way to burn out entirely, AGAIN, or just write more checks you can’t cash.) I was able to use the small block of supplied media/info to limp some updates along for May/June/July.

(I gotta say, at this point I really feel like Emma Stone in Easy A, kinda wish I had some flash cards and signs to help this shit along.)

In May, Romain also posted what I and others like to refer to ‘the apology tour’, promising again to resume communication about the game. It largely didn’t happen, though I was able to wrangle some media/info out in order to cobble together a Q&A the following month.

Now, he did maintain communication with me a bit more frequently during that time period,including sharing news of a (possibly) exciting new update on his end. I, however, encourage him to not share the news at that time. Part of the framing included another promise of doing more frequent news/updates, and, well, we see how THAT would have aged.

Bluntly, out of the content promised to Patreon subs over the past 12 months, maybe 3-4 months’ worth actually materialized. And most of that was because I hunted down scraps of information and packaged them into posts myself.

The Reality of Being a Human Being in this Shitty Timeline

Supporters only see outcomes. They see updates or silence, fulfillment or ghosting, consistency or chaos. What they don’t see is how often creators are drowning behind the scenes – including me.

I’m laying out my own reality here to show what communication looks like even when life is sideways. Because understanding how creators actually operate is part of understanding the pattern.

I fuck up my own stuff with Hashtag all the time. Life happens, projects get delayed, and things don’t go according to plan. (And I juggle a lot of shit!) I don’t always pause my Patreon payments either – but here’s the difference: I stay accessible. All my paid patrons are on my Discord, so even when I’m not posting TO Patreon, I’m still engaging them. When I’m having a bad mental week, I say so. When people have questions, I answer them. I don’t disappear. I don’t ghost. I even posted in the midst of two car crashes! (Not like IN the midst of… you get what I mean.)

Hard life events explain delays, slowdowns, and messy seasons. People can lose loved ones, move, burn out, deal with mental health, juggle chaos, lose their beloved Subaru when some moron t-bones them… I’m not saying any of that isn’t real or serious.

There’s a massive gap between “I’m struggling, but I’m here and communicating” and “I’ve been completely unreachable for months while continuing to collect money.”

(Though, obviously, being completely unreachable CAN happen. Death, coma, alien abduction – the possibilities are endless.)

Mental health struggles are very real and very punishing. Like many in the US, I’m ALSO existing in possibly the worst timeline ever and barely getting through each dumpster fire of a day. And no, I’m not saying “don’t have a Patreon if you’re depressed” – I’m saying if you’re at the point where you literally cannot communicate at all for months, you hit pause on charging people until you can. That’s protecting both you and your supporters. Pausing payments doesn’t delete your Patreon – it’s still there when you’re ready to come back.

(Again, doesn’t apply to alien abductions.)

Look, I know this isn’t a “fits every single setup in the world” statement. If you’ve literally told people upfront “BTW, sometimes I disappear without notice for a year or more, but payments will keep processing” – that gives them the knowledge and the choice to continue. Informed consent matters.

But this isn’t just about Derelicts. Plenty of creators work behind the scenes, and that’s fine – but “working behind the scenes” doesn’t replace the need for communication when people are literally paying monthly.

Don’t disappear while the meter keeps running.*

*Unless aliens.

By the way (to head off anyone sharpening their knives): I didn’t jump straight to posting this publicly. I attempted to address this privately for ageeesss.

I’m not showing this to drag one dude; I’m showing it because this exact pattern is universal in Early Access, Patreon projects, solo-dev scenes, and anywhere creators collect money while juggling real life.

And honestly? Not every solo dev has someone in their corner waving their arms like, “JUST SEND ME THREE SCREENSHOTS AND A SENTENCE, I WILL LITERALLY HANDLE EVERYTHING ELSE.”

But I was that person here – and even then, communication still flatlined.

This wasn’t one missed DM. This wasn’t skipping a month of community outreach. This wasn’t “oops, forgot.”

This was a year-long communication drought with brief flash-floods of activity – mostly empty promises that never led to sustained updates.

What Finally Got Movement

On Monday, December 1st, I finally texted not as a friend trying to help, but as someone documenting the situation publicly. I told him I was writing this post.

I wasn’t trying to ambush him. I explained my reasoning: I can’t call out other creators for not delivering and then give him a pass. That’s not fair to anyone.

On Wednesday, December 3rd, he responded. Said he understood, said he’d make a post “in the next day or two.”

Maybe this is just friendship bias (probably) but I’d like to think that he was genuinely already planning on posting to the community, and not that this is also a pattern you see everywhere: total silence until there’s external pressure.

Looking Ahead

Maybe he’ll post something in the next couple days. Maybe he won’t. Does that matter in the long run? Not really, because the issue isn’t this post, it’s the pattern. For a year, the cycle has been: promises → silence → movement only when pressure appears.

And here’s the bigger point:
When you’re evaluating creators – devs, studios, Patreon projects, whatever – what they say becomes irrelevant when it keeps clashing with what they deliver. Patterns don’t lie. Patterns don’t care about intentions. Patterns tell you the truth long before anyone else does.

Patterns can change, but not without effort. Not without consistency. Not without communication.

On Backing (Kickstarter, Patreon, etc.)

• Understand that your money may disappear into the void for an indefinite amount of time – or forever. So make sure that you’re OK with not getting what was promised, or what you paid for.
• If you’re already backing and things start getting funky, ask yourself whether this pattern or behavior is something you actually want to keep funding.
• Judge based on sustained action, not one reactive “I promise I’m back!” post.

Hope is nice. Data is better.

Bottom Line

Derelicts is just one example, but this exact pattern shows up across the entire creator ecosystem. And yeah, I like Romain! I want the game to succeed! I think he’s a good person! But I owe my community -and his- accuracy, not blind optimism, and accuracy comes from track record, not vibes.

This isn’t about whether a creator “means well.”
It’s about what was promised versus what was delivered.
It’s about where supporters were left waiting versus where creators actually showed up.
It’s about expectations that were set, and whether they were followed through on.

Make your own call. Just make it with the real information, not the hopeful version.