This is going to be a post where I will mostly talk about personal stuff. It's not going to be about my games, they will just briefly get mentioned. It's totally fine if you are not interested in that, I just like to keep the people that are up to date.
It has now been 9 months since the police seized my equipment based on false allegations and faked evidence. 9 Months where I was basically stripped off something that defined my personal and work life more than I thought it would. And while the culprits finally got their jail time after everything they have done to me, the main piece of shit is still out there, getting pumped with crypto money by his family, enjoying his live in thailand to the fullest, fully knowing that the international arrest warrant won't get him there, since thailand doesn't have a extradition treaty with Germany. The only hope would be interpol, but I'm not betting too much on that. For now, this absolute piece of human trash is still out there and he lives in a country where you can live like a king for not a lot of money - compared to Germany. The police knows all this, I hope, and I also hope they monitored his social media accounts ( that are gone, for now ).
But that is not really the thing I wanted to talk about. It's more how I personally feel being treated by the German law enforcement or rather, the cops. You see, the accusations of crypto scam were always super weird and vague, since I don't even own a bitcoin wallet. My lawyer and I talked a lot about my work and he said that this could lead to problems as well, since the police will check my equipment for anything they deem "not okay". Even though the evidence they have so far is super thin ( just photos of screenshots of an unknown phone, still ), they treat me like a super extreme criminal. We suspect it's because they can't get a hold of this piece of shit in Thailand so they do everything they can to put me in a bad light.
My games are available on so many sites on the internet. I have been on Patreon for almost 5 years, My New Memories is on Steam since 2021, so no matter what the investigating police officer may think she finds ( I know her name, thanks to some letters I got ), my games are perfectly legal and don't break any laws here in germany. I even told my lawyer that, even though he advised me to stay calm and maybe stop working on them for now, until all of this is over. But this is never going to happen.
No matter what a police officer, a state attorney or the highest judge in germany may think, I will never stop working on My New Family or My New Memories. These games were able to create huge communities on so many platforms - Be it on Patreon, on Itch, on Steam , Twitter or Discord. There might be a time coming where I have to rally all of you amazing people to confirm that my games are not what someone might want to make them out to be. I don't want to go into detail here because some of these things are still only being discussed with me and my lawyer, but I'm sure I can count on you if it comes to that.
The thing is, it has been 9 months. That is a very, very long time. The last My New Memories update, Chapter 3, released in May 2023. It was the biggest and most intense chapter so far and my dream was always to reach this point in the game - Anna waking up. I think I said this a lot of times already, so sorry for repeating it again.
While I was able to release a few things during these 9 months its still nowhere near what I'm used to and capable off. Getting my stuff taken, or rather, my harddrives since I really dont care about other PC Hardware, it was hard to be myself. I was able to complete My New Family and release the Christmas special. But that was also 6 months ago and since then... Nothing. My plan was to have the prequel out way earlier, preferably in May, especially after the feedback has been so good, but here we are.
My plan is that once I'm done with the next "ingame day" ( the weekend ) I will release it as a playable version for everyone. No more betas. There will be a demo coming earlier that will give you a short ( ~15-20 minutes ) preview of what you can expect in the prequel and the prequel itself will most likely be as big as the first version of My New Memories. My initial plan was that the prequel will be a one time thing - One game from start to finish. But after all the feedback I got and with not knowing how long it will take until I get my harddrives back ( trust me, my lawyer and I will do everything we can to get them back, no matter what it costs, and the chances for that are still just as good ), I want to have the prequel as something I can continue to work on.
Now I'm talking about the games after all, I guess. Here is a simple thing though that you can keep in mind: Once I have my hardware back, I can bring the prequel to a "closure" at any time. That doesnt mean the game is done and no one will ever hear from it again, but I can put an end to what I'm working on right now, release it like that and then finish Chapter 4 with all the renders. What that means is that the prequel can continue even after I got my hardware back, if that makes sense. I can continue to tell the backstory of the MC while also telling the story of the future, with Anna, the ginger twins and Karla etc. It would kinda mean I work on 3 games, I guess , My New Family 2, My New Memories and My New Memories the beginning... But I feel like this is exactly what I need right now.
I think once I have the demo released for all of you, you will understand what I mean. And then you can decide if you think this was the right decision or if making the prequel was a mistake right from the beginning. Really, if you think like that, share these thoughts with me as well, I'm open for any feedback.
But yeah, I guess I just wanted to share how I feel right now. These last 9 months have been tougher than I thought but the fact that the prequel got so well received already by the supporters helped a lot with feeling better. It's still different on a day by day basis, sometimes I feel okay, sometimes I really don't feel okay, especially when I remember how I'm being treated and handled by the law enforcement right now. That one person there can basically hold my live hostage because she thinks that my games might contain things she deems inapropiate is a very bad feeling, especially when I see how she handles these things right now. My biggest hope right now is that the state attorney comes to a differen conclusion, but we didn't hear anything new from her yet ( they were on vacation, apparently...).
Sorry for this rather long post but I feel like sometimes I have to get these things off my chest. I really can't put in words how much each and everyone of you mean to me because it's you guys that actually made me keep going. Like I said, if I wouldn't have such a big community and so many amazing people that talk to me, I would not be here anymore. I would probably have left the internet completely and falled into a deep hole again. So, thank you so so so much, really. I know I say this a lot but from the bottom of my heart, thank you.