Hello Ladies and Gentlemen and Welcome to The Right Opinion, the home of a twat with too much free time,
and as I’m sure many of you know, I am a gamer.
It is a bona fide fact at this point, from my early period throwing knife montages to my entourage on GTA 5,
my gaming skills are seldom equalled, and certainly not by anyone who I am covering today.
I am the epic gamer your parents tell you about so you better hide your wife.
And in true gamer fashion, we are going back to the world of video games,
with one of my most requested videos of all time, and that topic is Yandere Dev, an anime based game.
Ah anime… my favourite, what do people who like anime talk about?
Hello, fellow anime watchers. Uwu?
I’m gonna level with you guys here, one of my most commonly asked questions is if I watch anime,
and although I have seen a couple movies when I was much younger: Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle,
I haven’t really had the chance to enjoy much of it, although I have heard great things, and I really do respect the art, some of the art is truly beautiful.
Now anime has been relatively popular since the early 20th century, it obviously originated in Japan, and often represented the cultural zeitgeist.
The development of digital mediums has allowed the art to flourish and expand into new genres.
One of those is of course, the video game genre. There are many anime video games,
and it was in the video game heyday of the 1980s that anime inspired video games,
and video game inspired anime rose to prominence.
Since then, their popularity has continued to extend beyond their borders,
with the style attaining international prestige amongst a variety of audiences.
I also want to take a moment to talk about manga, which is typically used to refer to comics
and graphic novels, often created in the Japanese style, manga precedes anime,
and although mangas may be made reflecting an anime style, they are by no means the same.
However, there is overlap, that overlap can be demonstrated in many characterisations.
This is where we meet the Yandere.
*Evil laughing*
Yandere is a portmanteau (which is our word of the day) of the words “Yanderu” and “Deredere”,
Yanderu meaning sick, and deredere meaning infatuated, deeply in love.
So combined you reach the lovely idea that this person is in love to a sick extent,
they will do anything for their senpai, even if that means often less than charitable activities.
This personality trait is attributed to manga, however, it has gained popularity in anime as well,
with many characters being modelled around that mould.
The psychotic behaviour paired with an often cute design and sometimes demeanor,
seems to be a good contrast that has become quite the rave, but it wasn’t until one very cheeky game developer
had a very cheeky idea, how about we make a whole video game from the perspective of a Yandere.
That cheeky game developer was a person by the name of Alex Mahan,
currently operating under the very fitting name of Yandere Dev.
He was an independent developer hailing from California, he has a degree in animation,
and was previously known under the name EvaXephon, where he’d worked on the game of Lunar Scythe,
However, in spite of receiving some initial interest within forums it didn’t come to fruition.
That was previously his most renown project, but he has been a resident of the online world since the mid to late 2000s,
working on various concepts, one that I found was a game called Shayda.
Lots and lots of fun, it appears that Yandere Dev was a man with many ideas.
So let’s talk about the idea that brought us to this titular game.
He conceived the idea for Yandere Simulator in 2014, pitched it to the internet, and allegedly,
after receiving positive feedback, decided to initiate development, starting a YouTube channel
to document this development and progress. The YouTube channel, like all channels, was a bit slow at first,
but in perspective, gained subscribers at a relatively rapid pace,
catapulting his content, and respective project into the public eye.
It wasn’t too long before other larger creators gave the game a burst of publicity,
including Pewdiepie, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, and iHasCupquake.
Given its accessibility, even in its early stage of development, Yandere Simulator was pushed towards
the spotlight, and although it was not remotely near finished, many were more than willing to let this slide
considering that it was an independently funded venture, and sometimes true quality takes time.
He would typically upload content that would provide updates and ideas, and was interactive on social media,
however, it was a lot to do for one person. With this in mind, in 2014, Yandere Dev also set up a Patreon
to support this endeavour, and it gained a reasonable amount of donors, at one point totalling $5,000 a month.
With the production in full motion, new ideas ready to be worked on, plenty of traction and support from
community members, and even the odd volunteer along the way, everything seemed to be going perfectly,
however, if it was a perfect story we wouldn’t be here today.
If you went by his YouTube channel, it’s unlikely you’d see many issues,
Yandere Dev has now amassed over 2.6 million subscribers, his content appears to receive universally
positive feedback from his audience, and his subreddit is a place of joy and epic anime memes,
but this hasn’t changed the fact that there have been many videos, equally well-received,
dishing out some hard-hitting criticism, and numerous threads outside of the Yandere Dev chamber.
You see our friend Alex here, seemed to have a lot of creative ideas, which definitely gave hope to the project
on principle, however, as time passed, in spite of the notion that these ideas were receiving support,
many began to become frustrated with the lack of progress being made on the game, one year passed,
two years passed, three years passed, four years passed, and people didn’t feel like they were seeing results.
Now, many games take a long time, and with one developer it was obviously not expected to be completed too quickly,
Rome wasn’t built in a day. However, many began to challenge whether this project was comparable to Rome,
or whether it was more of a, well, Pompeii. With criticisms going after his management,
development, and even basic ability in the pursuit of his vision.
There were a diversity of criticisms to cover on this front, but Yandere Dev’s response was regularly documented
to be lacking the filter that many creators may have when dealing with criticism, this has led to additional
criticism for his demeanour and attitude, with many stating that his hostility and often censorious response
to criticism shows an arrogant and entitled side to him that he hasn’t earned yet.
Others who defended him said his responses were just those by an individual under a lot of pressure to deliver
a game that has been weighing on him for a long time. Add this to a load of other drama regarding attitude
and treatment of those around him, escalating in severity, and you ended up with a very messy case
indeed that came to ahead in 2018. If you’re confused, don’t worry,
I’ll do my best to get through all of it, and maybe we’ll make some more friends along the way.
Full disclosure, Thafnine, my good collaborator friend, put out this Tweet, which did significantly well in
the Twitter sphere, he then stated that I was making this video, which led both Yandere Dev, and a prominent critic
of his to reach out to me. Overall they had little effect on my script, but as always, I will clarify that unless you’re someone like
Austin Jones, I’m not here to bite your heads off. There’s gonna be a lot of criticism and opinions from me,
but as always, I encourage everyone to form their own. I’d also stress that some of this criticism is retrospective,
you’ll know by the tense I use, there is no guarantee that individuals involved feel the same today about
a lot of these things, but incidents have had a butterfly effect onto the current situation, thus cannot be ignored.
Now
Let’s talk about the video game that was almost completely derailed by internet drama.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s gamer time.
Given that the root of this video is the game, and the origins, I think it’s most appropriate that we begin there.
Yandere Simulator as a concept was conceived around the 2014 period, now, at first he was one man band,
working on the project. He may have had a lot of drive, it’s hard to tell completely,
In a late 2014 interview with Techraptor he seemed to be pretty motivated, he had some decent ideas of what he
wanted to do with the game, even if they weren’t fully realised, but you don’t exactly need them at that point.
He also appeared to genuinely enjoy interactions with his audience over the delightful medium of emails,
stating that it filled him with joy. At the end of the interview he committed to making a game that would
fulfill expectations and not let anyone down, but that’s easier said than done.
Projects on a large scale are always a challenge to an extent, you will inevitably go through periods of high,
and low motivation. Developing a game is never an easy process, however, there are also things you can do to
facilitate the development of a game, to maximise the efficiency, and to make sure you’re able to turn out a high
quality product in good time, without being sidetracked by menial issues.
These are all important aspects of management without even considering PR, PR meaning you need to build hype,
and turn out content that eventually justifies that hype. Now Yandere Simulator is clearly a neat concept that is
popular with many people, but it’s also just a game, and given the fact that the developer hasn’t exactly released any
other acclaimed work for people to build off, in spite of its popularity,
a trust in this developer, and his ability to deliver a game has to be earned.
With the almost immediate success of Yandere Dev, on principle, it seemed like there was a lot to celebrate.
When a concept is popular and takes off, you have a lot of momentum, and a lot of people, and businesses
wanting to provide their services. However, if you’re not prepared for this success, then it can yield many problems, for anyone.
Probably one of the best examples of this is child stars, now children need to be represented in media to an
extent, and many of them deal with it reasonably well, however, for those who have been thrown into the
spotlight at such a young age, whether it was due to a hit song, or an iconic film performance, many don’t deal with
the sudden spotlight and pressure well. Many end up in rather uncharitable places, in many instances,
it’s the case of peaking so early and having so much pressure to maintain that, in other cases, it’s simply not
being prepared for the responsibility that success brings. Although Yandere Dev is by no means what one
would consider a child star. The Yandere Simulator’s spontaneous success was somewhat equatable,
and I don’t think Yandere Dev was remotely ready for what it meant, not just as a creator, but as the developer
of a game. Although the 2014 origin was pretty relaxed, 2015 was met with a huge spike in attention,
with the aforementioned large creators showcasing the game to millions of fans.
Publicity can be premature, and I think for Yandere Simulator, it was. Let me explain why.
As noted, the build up of a game is partly about hype, typically the discovery of a new game or a new piece of
media will lead to a process where we either discard that discovery and leave it behind, or we become more
invested, and we fall down whatever rabbit hole that game has. Nonetheless, it’s unlikely our venture down
that rabbit hole will last forever, eventually we will hit a wall, where we can no longer find any new information,
and the information that we already know, no longer engages us.
For some people this takes longer than others, and in a way that’s alright.
Now, when we hit that wall we have one of two responses,
we can leave the source of what we know behind and continue with our lives,
destined to fall down another rabbit hole eventually, or we can try and obtain new information, by either creating
it ourselves, or trying to get it from the creator. This is often represented by the sentiment of impatience.
I’ll return to that soon. However, I want to make the point that although Yandere Simulator was an interesting
concept, and it was great that he had a lot of support in developing it initially, Yandere Simulator
wasn’t developed enough to be deserving of the publicity it received. Yandere Dev had very ambitious ideas for the game,
at the time of the game, although you could roam around do a few actions, some of which were fairly brutal
and amusing in their shock value, there was no deeper substance, this meant that the game built hype almost
immediately, yet on the back of mostly very superficial elements that wouldn’t keep people engaged for a prolonged period.
With the hype, and an influx of new donors on Patreon, Yandere Dev felt the pressure to maintain the hype,
but as said, it is equally a PR job as it is a developer’s job. So he liked to document progress, which is a time
consuming venture. In the short term, this was the sensible decision to make, but it would only work out
long term, if the decisions that he made were backed by his ability. The decisions you make early on in the
development of a game can have long term effects at a later stage, you’re setting the foundations.
On top of this, as documented in a later video, any possible overhaul of the game seemed troublesome
because the Dev was worried that doing that would kill the hype.
Yandere Dev: "The game is only alive for as long as people are interested in it.
If people lose interest in the game, it's dead.
If I release frequent updates, people will remain interested in the game.
If I realize updates slowly, people will lose interest in the game and the game will get closer to death."
TRO: Given that so many people had experienced the game in some capacity,
he clearly saw it as a challenge to revive the hype if he lost it.
On the surface, many people would just see him as trying to resell the same product and won't buy.
I’m not going to go into complete depth regarding why his decision to continuously work on the project since to
maintain hype was eventually what has also fundamentally crippled it yet; we’ll cross that bridge when we reach it,
however, as is inevitable, eventually, even if you’re adding content, if there is no clear compilation of a plotline or
overarching concept that people feel satisfied with, they will begin to become frustrated, results are important.
This was a huge problem with Yandere Dev as he had clearly prioritised certain components that although may
have provided progress in the moment, didn’t necessarily provide the feeling of progress to his audience,
particularly regarding the rivals, which to many was a significant selling point. Many people began to hone
in on the fact that they didn’t feel that Yandere Simulator was making the progress it should have, with focus being
overly centered on trivial matters, and easter eggs. This led to a basically placebo sentiment of progress,
the project felt like it was moving forward, but not in the ways that people would want it to, and by 2016,
people were becoming restless, not just in the game’s development but in Yandere Dev’s responses to these frustrations.
How did he handle them? Well let’s talk about it.
*Music*
Now Yandere Dev is an interesting person, his past shows that he was never the most socially apt,
and when you watch his videos you receive the impression that he isn’t exactly a massive people-loving
extrovert. So it’s clear that he probably wasn’t used to this level of positive attention, what this can do to a person is often varied,
but given that he was always a bit of an oddball, the outcome wasn’t exactly favourable.
It’s hard to say exactly where the switch was flipped, but at a point where the feedback he received was no longer universally positive,
he just stopped taking it with the decorum that one might expect him to.
And when questions start being asked, they look to you to answer, and let’s just say he didn’t exactly provide the desired responses.
Arrogant is a word I see used a lot, and honestly, I completely understand why a lot of people
have that opinion. Particularly in 2016, there are multiple screenshots of him being incredibly short tempered
with people who were making inoffensive to good faith criticism. He likes to use the word “stupid” a lot when
describing anything he doesn’t like, which, in the wrong context, can always come across as rather superior.
He would regularly clash with fans and critics alike. There was one situation where a fan was using a mod,
and in response to this, Yandere Dev responded kicked him from the game and left him an interesting message,
honestly the video is a bit pissy but it’s obviously a fan just annoyed, and as videos go it’s fairly mild mannered.
It’d be reasonably easy to diffuse as a creator who the fan probably looks up to.
Instead, Yandere Dev responds by going on an angry diatribe about how this guy’s a dumbass, and he can
f right off. When asked to justify this on his Reddit, he stated that he was a passionate guy.
He didn’t really see any issue with his tone, because he’s a person who puts his all into this game.
But it’s not that simple, you can work hard on something, but that doesn’t give you free license to be a colossal d*** about it.
This is what people mean when they speak about arrogance, they mean this attitude that someone is
entitled to behave in such a way because a greater cause they are participating in,
when those things are not connected at all. You’re not above principles of civility.
And sometimes as an adult, as a public figure, people will hold you to a much tighter account
This was a pattern with Yandere Dev, I could go over all these examples but I’d just be repeating myself.
He frames it as honesty, and him speaking his mind, but being honestly unpleasant, is still being unpleasant,
from the position he was in, it came across arrogance as well, and as we’ll find out later,
when other people were unpleasant back to him, he didn’t take it well.
Nonetheless, this isn’t actually my favourite example because, eventually, he didn’t just go from responding
badly to audiences who were impatient, he went to blaming them altogether.
Until recently, on the Yandere Dev wiki, it stated that “Yandere Dev is
best known for working really hard”, it’s almost like Yandere Dev wrote it himself
Well, it's possible he did.
However, as mentioned, many people have doubted that, given the slow progress, but in 2016 he decided to finally
explain exactly what was holding him up. What was Yandere Simulator's biggest problem? Well you might be surprised...
In a now removed video titled “Yandere Simulator’s Biggest Problem”, he blamed emails for the prevention of progress on the project.
Yes... emails.
Yandere Dev: "You're probably sick of hearing about it by now. Im sincerely sick of talking about it.
I'd love to stop talking about this subject but that can only happen when it stops
being the biggest problem I'm facing."
TRO: In fact, he stated that he spends 8-12 hours a day on them
Yandere Dev: "I receive an avalanche of emails every single day
Depending on how much email I get, sometimes I spend between 8 and 12 hours going through my email
Leaving me with no time in the day to write code for the game"
TRO: Now, this is where the contradiction appears, because you must be thinking to yourself,
“Well, these must be important emails if he spends so much time on them”. Well, they’re apparently not.
Yandere Dev: "When you send me a stupid email, you are actively sabotaging the game's development.
If you want this game to come out faster,  you should not email me unless it's absolutely necessary."
TRO: In fact, throughout the video he brands a high majority of these emails as stupid,
he goes through each category of stupid emails, I do wonder how this video flew with anyone who isn't stupid.
Because there is no way that this made any remote sense. I strongly dislike this video, whether it’s the
floating screen demon or his incredibly condescending tone, like he's talking to a bunch of twelve-year-olds.
Though, he might be. I don't know his audience.
That’s my feelings, but even feelings aside, this was about as about as watertight as the Titanic,
post-iceberg of course.
Yandere Dev: The emails that I receive fall into 5 categories:
Volunteers, Bug Reports, Questions, Suggestions, Fan Works
TRO: I don’t understand, firstly, I’m surprised, and somewhat sceptical that as many people as he said
email him. Secondly, if so few emails that you receive are worthwhile, although they can be irritating in the
moment, what was stopping him from either not bothering opening them, or just opening, seeing what it’s
about, and once they’ve been deemed “stupid” by your standards, closing it again.
Stupid emails should take less than 10 seconds to check,  and doing the maths, that means that
he was going through a lot of emails in a day. And I found it hard to buy that he was just engaging with every last one.
Yandere Dev: "If someone volunteers to help me out, and they don't include any examples of there previous work,
I immediately delete their email and move on to the next one.
I'm not going to waste my time typing an email that says 'I don't know whether or not I want your help.
I haven't even seen what your work looks like yet. Show me what your work looks like first."
TRO:  Oh wait, he does that too, so he must just be held up by the volume of emails,
how many emails would he be receiving?
If he was receiving emails from so many people offering to volunteer, maybe he should have a volunteer
for his emails. The video seemed like a rather mean-spirited way for Yandere Dev to scapegoat his own audience
as the reason for his own shortcomings. It’s basic management, and blaming your audience because you
can’t handle it is just daft, implying that they’re sabotaging the development, it’s ridiculous.
Making a simple request for less emails is fair enough, but telling people that sending emails is ruining the
progress of the game is not just blatantly untrue, but you gotta know about the Streisand Effect.
Why would you bring more attention to your emails? Pretty sure the Yandere Simulator demographic aren’t the biggest
users of that medium of communication, why would you remind them that it exists? It’s like Superman making a
video about how people shouldn’t bring Kryptonite near him. It’s a waste of time,
he wasted his time making a video about how emails are wasting his time.
Yander Dev: "Stop. Stop right there. After two years of this nonsense,
I've already heard every single possible suggestion about how I can solve my email problem.
There is no idea that you could possibly suggest that I haven't already shot down.
So don't send me your brilliant ideas for how to solve my email problems
because it's not going to work. The only way you can help me solve my email problems if you
Stop. Sending. Me. Emails.”
TRO: You can see what part of time management that I’m not really a fan of on his behalf,
even if the video is not intended as a scapegoat, it’s clear that he cares too much about things that can be
handled fairly easily. As noted, he definitely has his limitations, however, capability to not spend whole days
on going through emails should not be one of them. Of course, he didn’t recognise that, and after listing out all
the ways you shouldn’t email him, does actually address some of the rather unpleasant interactions he’s had,
however, he does it  by making a monologue about how he is descending like some kind of anti-hero,
over Beethoven’s No 7 symphony as if the boi thinks he’s slick.
Yandere Dev: "You know, there was a point in time, when I was a very nice and patient person.
But, working on this game for the past two years, has been very stressful.
And it has sucked all of the niceness out of me. I know longer have any patience left.
I started responding to emails using very harsh and abusive language
I'm not proud of myself for doing this, and I'd like to stop but it has become impossible to control my temper
when I am subjected to the same stupid garbage every hour of every day despite the fact
that I constantly ask people to stop. I'm only going to get grumpier and grouchier and angrier
the longer this goes on. Please stop sending me stupid emails."
TRO: We all deal with stress in different ways, and it’s okay to open about these things, but Yandere Dev has a way of
doing it that just seems to push blame onto other parties, even those who may admire him,
and he’s so unnecessarily irritable that it makes it very hard to empathise.
This was the first time he had ever seemingly made a direct video addressing these issues,
and it didn’t give me hope for the coming years. It seemed to lack a sense of responsibility and
understanding of the life he’s living, and the responsibilities that come with it.
But it get even deeper than just that. But let's talk more about his time-wasting.
*Music*
I think this was somewhat deeper than just that though.
I want to talk about the nature of time-wasting and why he was doing it.
Yandere Dev had a problem known as chronic justification syndrome,
It is the motivation to respond to every single criticism and suggestion to give the impression to your audience
that you are on top of everything. You are in control. Do I think he’s exaggerating in his emails video?
For sure, I highly doubt he ever spent 12 hours a day on emails, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did go about
responding to various people who didn’t require responses. There are more reasons for this, that I’ll also divulge soon.
As a creator, you have to understand that with an increased audience you will undoubtedly not be able to respond
to every single person who criticises you, because it is terrible time management, but also, unless you actively
enjoy it, it’s a mentally depleting activity once you reach a certain size. So wrapping himself up making videos,
going through emails, is obviously going to hold you up. Yandere Dev clearly feared people having an image of
him that he didn’t desire, and therefore wrapped himself up in so much drama that it was almost laughable.
Another heavily referenced example is this one where he exchanges an email with someone
from the Wiki admin team. I think it was Yandere Dev Wiki
once again, I don’t know the exact context so I can’t say if he has a point or not, but it doesn’t sound like a
particularly necessary problem. It’s a case of control, he likes to control the narrative regarding how people
perceive him. This is probably likely because in around 2016 he was called out for his previous persona, who went by the name of
EvaXephon, I think that's how you pronounce it. Though, I could be wrong.
And how this person had behaved in communities. Honestly, regarding this whole discussion, there’s a lot
that you know I’m not gonna hold against a person, all that I'll say is, he’s clearly quite strange
and I think that many people felt the details were a little discomforting.
There’s a whole additional drama attached to this which has been covered in some very in depth videos,
he used to be active on the delightful hub of 4chan, which is where he originally pitched the idea for yandere Dev,
however they had a field day with this situation, and many others, so now he hates them despite the fact that
he made the quote “most anti-SJW game in existence”, and they rejected him. What a sad story.
There were some more serious claims that we’ll briefly touch on now.
Most worryingly was the claim of pedophilia, for which his response left me feeling some degree of confusion.
There has been lots of discussion about whether if he was in favor of certain less than palatable activities.
Though, he does seem to clarify them now. He also responded to the claims that he received nudes from an underaged person.
And I mean, it’s all rather incoherent, it does seem like he was adjusting his statement to the tune of the
criticism that he was receiving, but there’s not really too many more details to this,
There was one account against him, and although a detailed testimony, there’s no verifiable physical proof,
so do with it what you will. On top of this, there was a Pastebin detailing what is allegedly him trying to groom a
younger individual, but Pastebin’s format doesn’t make it a particularly reliable source. Now, it’s fair to say that
Yandere Dev is a strange character, and his internet history is not flattering to say the least, but it’s also
because of that, that it’s not entirely clear if or where the truth ends and the lies begin in this case. We’ve seen a
few situations where strange behaviour is escalated with additional claims that turn out to not be entirely true,
which is why it’s hard to speak conclusively here, however, there is something conclusive it can tell us.
Simply put, with all these old posts and new claims floating around, it would likely make him fairly paranoid,
and explain why he may have felt the need to constantly defend himself, because he wanted to stomp out
criticism, and to quote “debunk” the narrative while it was still fairly fresh, he didn’t want it becoming the
predominant perspective, though, as noted by this volunteer, it’s probably worth remembering when
considering working under him. If 2014 to 2015 was the high, 2016 was the hangover,
Yandere Dev did not seem to coherently understand both sides of popularity. He had appeared to face these claims in 2015,
but it seems that people didn’t really clock how this was affecting development of the Yandere Simulator until
early 2016. But okay, if his behaviour was not how to deal with criticism, how should he deal with it?
It’s important to remember the source of that impatience, the game itself. The fact is that regardless
of whether Yandere Dev was a good or bad person, a sensational majority of the fanbase just wanted
the game and there will always be a small minority who will criticize you for other things.
Now, when you become successful, you need to adapt to that success, that’s something that Yandere Dev
clearly couldn’t understand. Because although he had hired volunteers, and made a commitment on his
Patreon that he’d be hiring volunteers after a certain amount, which he did hit at one point.
Given his lofty ambitions, he clearly didn’t have a grip on balancing outsourcing and what he wanted to talk about himself.
One of the problems here is that Yandere Dev was, and maybe still is, rather possessive over his game,
this is probably why he had lashed out at people trying to suggest changes sometimes
or criticise the choices that he has made, it certainly doesn’t justify it but it makes a little more sense.
However, being possessive also means wanting to retain creative control to a large extent, you want to see your game
developed how you would like it. I understand that, but if you spend so much time working on your own image,
of course, you’re not gonna have anywhere near enough time to actually focus on the game, and this meant that
even if changes were being made, the fact that Yandere Dev was in control meant that there was a lack of pace.
However, was that about to change?
You know at The Right Opinion, we are forgiving, I think it’s important to let people have the opportunity to grow,
as long as you haven’t done anything too grim, it’s not too late for a redemption arc, and following the
Yandere Dev story. At one point I genuinely thought we might get it…
Now, email bollocks aside, the root problem that anyone could draw from what we’ve looked at so far, was
organisation. It’s clear that given the output, if it wasn’t laziness, which you know, I’ll entertain for the benefit of
the doubt’s sake, he clearly wasn’t handling things well, and at the start of 2017,
this seemed to be an issue that he was finally coming to terms with.
Yandere Dev: "Let's talk about the spend of Yandere Simulator's development, the obstacles that are slowing
down development, and potential solutions that could speed things up."
TRO: I mean obviously it’s a complex discussion on principle, we know that the Yandere Dev hires volunteers,
so he’s not necessarily doing this alone, and those volunteers are quite involved within the creation of the game.
Yandere Dev: "90% of the things you see and hear in the Yandere Simulator would have never been possible
without the help of those talented people. However, all of these amazing assets come at a cost.
I am the game's director, producer, and manager. I am also the lead artist, and the lead animator, modeler. composer, etc.
I don't create artwork, animations, models, and music. But I am in charge of managing and directing
all of the people who produce those things for Yandere Simulator.
I am also the game's only programmer. I must perform all of the responsibilities
that would normally be performed by about ten different people if this was a real game company.
In spite of this, he is still heavily involved in managing each area, as the director, and manager, he needs to
make sure it comes together to make a cohesive vision, something that, on principle I do empathise with.
This is covered extensively in parts one and two of a set of videos that cover the delays in the game,
and exactly how he plans on resolving those problems. Wow, we are making progress.
So how did he? Let's talk about it.
*Music*
In a pair of videos at the start of 2017 titled “What’s Taking So Long?”, he responds to the rhetorical question
that many of his audience have asked. However, he doesn’t throw any tantrums, he doesn’t lose his cool,
nor does he try and pin it on emails. He explains the problems of his job, and how they, and other factors,
influence how he manages his workload. So in a final deeper analysis of his problems, he looks at a few solutions.
Yandere Dev: "In the past, I placed a strong emphasis on low hanging fruit. In other words, features that could be
implemented within two weeks. With minimal assistance from volunteers.
So, for a long time, I was able to add significant new features to the game every two weeks.
But, eventually, I ran out of low hanging fruit to implement. The next step was to
work on the middle hanging fruit, which required more collaboration with volunteers
and more programming work than before. this is when features started taking four weeks or several months
to implement. The fruit that I am aiming for now, Osana Najimi, is the highest fruit on the tree,
and requires me to spend extensive amounts of time speaking to volunteers which leads me to
almost no time to actually write code."
TRO: Now some may question some of the statements that he makes in this video, particularly pertaining to his workload,
and those questions would be completely justified, but whether he is being honest or not,
he at least seems to grasp that the current rate of progress is unsustainable.
Yandere Dev: "Even though I devote almost every single hour of my life to Yandere Simulator,
I've made zero code related progress to Osana over the past two weeks,
because of all the other things that take up my time and require my attention.
I have no problem managing a team of people and I enjoy programming, but there are simply not enough hours on a day
to manage a team of people and make significant progress with the game's code.
I think the most elegant solution would be to hire someone to take my place as the game's lead programmer.
So that I can focus exclusively on being a director/producer/manager,
While someone else writes all the code. I have specialties but I don't specialize in
most of the stuff Yandere Simulator needs the most. I put forth my best effort
but if a more experienced programmer had been in charge of writing Yandere Simulator in code
they probably would have done a bunch of things way differently."
TRO: The general tone of this video outlines that he’s going to begin to make inquiries regarding the
outsourcing of various tasks, so he doesn’t have to manage everything himself. He’s seriously contemplating
handing over control in executive areas. That, for many developers is a brave move, but it was a necessary move
for him, because by keeping production the public, and the game accessible, he had a pace that he had to
maintain, and if he felt like he couldn’t stop, it would not only sacrifice the speed of development, but the quality
as well. How he would hand over control is another question? Let’s discuss the possible methods that he presented.
The first one was a crowdfunding campaign. Yandere Dev was planning to do a crowdfunding campaign at some point in the future regardless,
this plan merely involved moving this campaign forward, and hiring a team to work on the product earlier.
Now, there are positives to this, such as the fact that it allows him to retain control over the greater project,
even if he’s assigning roles to other people. This would allow work to be completed faster, and maintain hype for
the upcoming game while staying in line with his model. Nonetheless, it’s also possible that at this point, people
would feel insulted that he is once again asking for money on top of his Patreon, and the amount they’ve
been waiting already would not justify this. The crowdfunding campaign was something he really
should’ve been doing back in 2014. It’s also possible that he may not be able to
raise that money at all, and that this may be embarrassing for him as a developer.
I could, forget about Osana, launch the crowdfunding campaign immediately, assemble a team,
begin refactoring the game's code as soon as possible, and then release Osana after the
refactoring was complete. But I'm not sure if you guys would really want this."
TRO: The second solution was that he contracts with another company to finish the game,
the benefits of this were that he wouldn’t have to ask for money from his audience, and thus avoids them
receiving the impression that he’s exploiting them, and he has the stability of a larger business supporting him if
he ever feels like he can’t hold up the project himself. It’s more of a mutual support system.
Nonetheless, this came with its own problems, particularly if this was done over contract. Giving up
certain creative controls may lead to the sacrifice of one’s vision, something that Yandere Dev was notoriously
possessive over, it also led to being bound into a contract that, under strain, may cause the whole project
to collapse.  Throughout his video, Yandere Dev clearly paints himself as very sceptical towards businesses.
Yandere Dev: "I've already been approached by multiple companies
who have expressed an interest in getting involved with Yandere's Simulator's development
in exchange for a cut of the game's profits. They proposed deals that involve me giving up 50% of the
game's profits or losing ownership of the game's intellectual property or removing
certain features from the game. These terms are all very unappealing to me."
TRO: So it seems that whatever option he wants to choose, there is some degree of reservation regarding
them.There was a lot of pressure, but at the end of it all, it was an ultimatum, if Yandere Dev continued to try and
do the project alone, the time it would take for the video game to be released would kill the hype regardless, so
he stated that he was prepared to take the plunge. There was one more option that he presented, but I’m gonna
save that for later. Yandere Dev conducted a poll with these options and the fandom decisively backed him to remain on
the current trajectory, but the problem was, although preferable to many, maybe even to Yandere Dev himself,  it wasn’t sustainable.
Yandere had continuously committed to wanting the video game released by 2019, and there was no scope of
that happening if he continued in the current direction. However, was this all smoke and mirrors? Or was he
going to follow through on a commitment for once? Well, not too long after he posted a video which
announced that Yandere Simulator was about to enter a collaboration phase,
alongside this, the criticism of the companies in the previous video is very quickly reeled in.
Yandere Dev: "During this part of the video, I portrayed companies as evil, greedy entities that
would steal money from me, take full possession of Yandere Simulator and censor the game.
It was a bad idea to portray companies like this because not every game developer or game publisher is like that.
The language that I used to describe companies in my latest video probably had a strong effect on the poll
where I asked people what they wanted me to do. Let me take a moment to talk about companies in a
nonbiased way. Over the past two weeks, I spent a lot of time speaking to a company where they has an
experience in developing games, publishing games, and also working together with struggling developers
to help them finish their games. This company has a really good reputation with indie devs
and their name came up numerous times when I asked other developers to recommend a good company
to work with. When I asked people for their opinions on this company, nobody was able to tell me a single negative about them.”
TRO: Yandere Dev has made the decision to go towards a publisher or developer rather than a crowdfunded project.
Who though? Well, a publishing company named TinyBuild.
TinyBuild are an independent games publisher based in Washington. The state, not the city, well there are multiple cities
named Washington but you know what I mean. They’re the developers of the game: No Time To Explain,
however, they’ve also published games from all over the globe and you probably heard of some of them.
TinyBuild was probably one of the better options, they have experience, and credit within the industry, however,
they’re not too corporate, and that might lend some more trust between the collaborators in question.
Yandere Dev himself was very optimistic, stating that he’d never heard about any bad experiences
with the company, and that many had recommended them to him.
His partnership with TinyBuild would assure many new developers coming onto the game, and working under his
management, he would still be the lead designer, he would still have the final say, there was no power being
taken away from him. The only catch was that there would be no content that may provide it with an adults
only rating, but that was something that he had anticipated regardless.
Overall, the plan was for TinyBuild to take over many of the more business-related matters,
on top of the development aspects that Yandere Dev felt like he was weaker in.
Yandere Dev: "I have no experience hiring people, drafting contracts, trademarking things,
or any of the other business-related or law-related aspects of game development.
I'm good at making prototypes and implementing low-hanging fruit very quickly
but I'm not really experienced enough to write complex character A-I or do some of the other complicated
things that are needed to make Yandere Simulator become a reality.
So, it makes perfect sense for me to partner up with a company like TinyBuild
and let them handle all of the things I'm bad at while I focus on the things I'm only good at."
TRO: Yandere Dev also clarifies that this partnership mostly covers creative resources, rather than monetary
funding, thus, although crowdfunding may still be a possibility, he would eventually charge people to play the
alpha version of the game, once he considers it complete enough to begin charging. This is a decision
that he would make after he had finished Osana. He also said this would not be changing much monetarily, and
YouTube ad revenue alongside Patreon were his only sources of income.
However, one of the most significant developments was that TinyBuild would be providing him Yandere Dev
a programmer who would sort out a new code for the game, while he was working on Osana. Progress would be slow
at first, but eventually, as according to this very professional graph, the pace would pick up as TinyBuild
take over more assets, leaving Yandere Dev to focus on his executive role.
Wow, like a jigsaw, it was finally all falling into place…
T9: Except it didn’t, it kind of failed
TRO: Well yeah, but we’re meant to build up the tension
T9:  Yes I’m sure your viewers are on the edge of their seat waiting for me to pop up aren’t they?
What we’re supposed to do is talk about coding, do you know about programming?
TRO: I’m a gamer first and forthmost, and I always will be.
T9: …hmm I don’t see you as the gaming type…
oh kay then , let’s talk about the failure of the TinyBuild partnership, shall we…?
A game development cycle is the most turbulent time of the year. There’s a saying when it comes to game
development: ‘If all else fails, hire someone to do the job for you and then reap all the benefits of being a sole
developer while leaving the poor person in the dust to become a ghost in the industry’. I made that one up, but
the point is that it is extremely rare for someone to work on a massive game completely and utterly on their own
with no assistance whatsoever, and when someone does and releases it to a wide audience, there’s a chance
that it could turn out really really good or really really bad. I’ve talked about this in my own video, but for the uninitiated
Yandere Simulator is a game that runs on the Unity engine. Before you get your superpowered panties in a
twist, I’m not slating the Unity engine itself, games that are made on the Unity engine, like any other engine all
have varying degrees of quality; you only notice the bad asset flips because the developers didn’t have enough
money to remove the watermark at the beginning of the game and have to hang their heads in shame as the
dreaded grey screen shows up saying that yes, this game is indeed made on the Unity engine. Going back to
Yandere Simulator, and the most common complaint about the game was that it runs like an athlete in QWOP
but he’s got a third leg protruding from his stomach and he runs by constantly front flipping down the track and
the buttons also included the mouse keys on the side. The game was horrible to run, even on a beast rig.
Loading up into the lobby and you’re greeted with less frames than viewers on a standard Mixer stream and all
you could really do to keep your PC from bricking itself was look at the floor.
Of course this spells problems for the casual player with a less than stellar PC and signification lack of YouTube
money, as opening the game would open your entire town to nuclear destruction.
There are quite a few reasons why this is an issue especially in Yandere Simulator, but the biggest one goes
down to the way that the game’s being programmed by the dev. If you looked at the game without any knowledge
as to its background or how it was even created, you’d probably think that it could easily run on a calculator, but
if you played it, you’d probably be lucky to get a frame in? But why is this? I touched upon this in my own video, but
if there was one thing YandereDev wasn’t really the best at, it was programming his game properly to work
efficiently and on all devices; the code looked like a complete nightmare. It was like the whole concept of
variables was unheard of to him. Before you guys brandish your pitchforks and call for my public execution
for being mean about his coding when he never had any experience before, let me explain why a lot of people take
a big issue with his programming. Yandere Simulator has been in active development for about 5 to 6 years,
and he has been programming the game the entire time when he wasn’t live streaming video games or making
more videos explaining the ‘lore’. He’s being paid the same wage, if not more than professional programmers,
who by now would have completely finished the game and done several patches to it and released it on the
Nintendo Switch and Nokia Brick. He’s commented that he knows his code looks awful and that he only codes on
areas that aren’t used frequently. If he’s saying that then that means he clearly knows how to code properly so
why isn’t he doing it? The code looks like a complete mess!! In the code he uses the update() function, and fills it
to the brim with things that the game will do at that specific point. The problem is that with this function, said
things will run every single frame. I can go into more detail about the coding but several programmers have
made comments and points about it, so I’ll leave notes about what the ‘professionals’ say with TRO so he can
add it to the really really large amount of sources that’s been compiled for the video.
Now where does TinyBuild come in? TinyBuild offered to extend their services to Yandere Dev, as any professional
programmer would look at the code that he’s done and projectile vomit all over the screen. Initially reluctant to
have another programmer do a better job than him, he eventually caved and a developer was sent to work on
the game, with TinyBuild hopping on board to publish the game should it get released. Good coding is meant to be
flexible, quick and efficient, so that when needed, you can make quick optimisation edits and make sure the
game doesn’t murder your Intel Atom processor from 1923. This is what the TinyBuild developer ended up
getting up to, optimising hundreds of lines of code to make sure that the game runs slightly better than it did
before that point, which meant removing the depressing amounts of else if arguments in the code. The
partnership lasted a while with the programmer allegedly redoing most of the code of the game, until he
was suddenly dropped with a statement made on YandereDev’s patron, pretty much saying that the code
couldn’t be read because it was too simplified and there was a lack of else-if statements to boot, as it would
hinder the progress of him making his game: at this TinyBuild packed their bags and left the project, probably
not seeing a completion date for the game this decade or even century. With their departure and the
programmers’ yeeting off the project, Yandere Dev was now free to execute an extra 2048 lines of code
in a single update function to run every single frame and finish his plan to cause global warming
all over again and raise the overall heat of the Earth with the amount of fried PCs the game would end up causing over the next few years.
But this wasn’t the only thing that Yandere Dev has been accused of neglecting… nay, he had some more trouble under his belt that even more
information has been shown as recent as a week before writing this segment. And that heinous crime is… stealing assets.
Allegedly, it’s been stated that he’s been stealing assets for his game, and while I wouldn’t put it past him to do
such a thing, I’m going to give him the benefit of doubt in this situation. Throughout the entirety of the
development cycle of the game thus far, YandereDev has promised that the models and assets that are currently in
the game will be replaced down the line with more polished models from the ground up: the very model for
the main character of the game is taken straight out of the Unity asset store and quite a lot of the assets around
the school were taken from various places from the internet. Now standard development practices list that
without a license or specific written permission from the owner of the assets as well as credit, you cannot monetise your game whatsoever:
you just got caught using that one font that you downloaded from dafont years ago on a used park bench
asset that you forgot even existed? Well too bad someone found it and now you’re thousands of dollars in
debt and your game’s been banned from every single marketplace ever conceivable. Now YandereDev didn’t
want any of this to happen to his game… he was planning on making big bucks and selling it on the
biggest marketplaces known to man… and the Epic Games store. So he promised that the models of the
game would change down the line. Now you guys must’ve heard either from me or TRO earlier on that
YandereDev makes use of volunteers to keep the game going on. He isn’t a one man band, a man needs help!
And what better way to get help than with people who are sacrificing their free time in order to provide you with
some assets to improve your game? Which is exactly what one artist did for him. On Twitter, an artist named
SOZOMAIKA recently made a thread unearthing the turbulent tales of her encounters with the dev.
She had improved the character designs of the game to make them 50 times more original than the original
concept, providing concept art for Yandere-chan amongst other things. She states that she was asked to
modify the in-game model, design posters, illustrate his youtube skit, redraw another artist’s work because he
didn’t like the quality…? Design skins and contribute some props. Now you’re probably thinking to yourself:
That’s a whole lot of work, surely she didn’t do all of it? Well she ended up doing the entire thing and submitted it.
Now before you get your pitchforks out and blast the artist for working for free, you guys need to understand
that at that time she was still a teenager and worked multiple jobs in addition to trying to build her online
presence and portfolio. And besides, it was the perfect opportunity to work with THE YandereDev. Just as long as she got credit.
The video was released and to the shock and horror of a grand total of no one there was no credit in the video.
She had to email YandereDev to get credit for the work she did, and when she asked he told her (No.)
Citing nepotism as a reason. In this thread Maika also shows the emails that YandereDev sent her and I’ll just
present these without comment. Discounting the melodramatic nature of some of the emails; why does
there need to be a back and forth about this? Just credit the artist? Other games don’t seem to have this issue so
I don’t understand what the problem is here. Especially if the artist didn’t ask for payment or anything, just credit:
the work that was handed to her was very intense and that’s enough work for a full-time freelancer gig,
so the fact that she didn’t ask for money in the first place makes it even more essential
that you give her full credit for the work she did immediately on publication!
All in all, the rampant mismanagement of the game seems to never end, and hopefully there’s going to be
some improvements to the way the game is run…? Nah, I’m not too sure about that one,
but at least this was a fun revisit to the antics of YandereDev! Back to you in the studio.
Yandere Dev: "If I hire an experienced veteran programmer, with experience in the unity game engine
to take my place on Yandere Simulator, he's not gonna wanna work with my code and pick up where I left off
he is going to want to rebuild many of the game's most important systems so the game has a proper foundation."
TRO: That’s gonna be a massive yikes from me.
Yandere Dev was never particularly well trained in the area of development, although he described himself as
strong at implementing the quote “low hanging fruit”, this was probably simply because it was something he
was capable of doing while using a less than ideal method. In some future posts, he said that he couldn’t
talk about the deterioration of his partnership with TinyBuild, although he later said something so I’m not
sure what the terms of his legal contract were. In summary, it appears that Yandere Dev had compatibility
issues with a more efficient system, and I think that can be a problem.
He would often go on in the future to frame it as a subjective difference, despite admitting to being poor at
it in previous videos, and I don’t think it’s merely creative differences, let me explain.
Okay, so, I play squash, it’s a fun game. For most squash players who want to win matches there are a general set
of principles that your style of play should adhere to. We all have personal touches that help us develop our own
brand, but at the end of the day, if you play in a style that is too incompatible with the game of squash, chances
are you won’t win the game. This is a general principle that you can follow into most professions and hobbies.
Creating a video game stems from the same general rules, it is likely that we have our own personal flair and
approach, but there are general rules that will alter the outcome in a possibly favourable, and unfavourable way with your audience.
At the end of the day, the only person I’m playing a squash game for is me, there’s no-one out there who has
invested in my performance, so I’m not expected to perform. However, if I was contracted or I was playing for a league team ,
I think it’d be reasonable for me to adhere to a few rules to make sure that my performance in the task was
somewhat efficient. Now, Yandere Dev can develop the game how he wants to on principle, however, he has a lot
of people who have an implanted expectation based on industry standards, and given that he is often appealing
to that audience for the funding and support, you’d think he would be more focused on delivery.
When his initiative received a groundswell of support in 2014, what he should have done is worked out how to
improve his skill at programming, before working out how to develop the game in a constructive way,
rather than basing his developments off what would build the most hype and just doing it his own way,
which only postponed the eventual confrontation of an unfinished game. When a solution had finally been
calculated, almost three years after development began, his previous approach to creating the game made
working with what he had done incredibly difficult, and his prevailing stubbornness when presented with a
possible solution eventually prevented the progress that may have been achieved. It reminds me of an old post he
made where he turned some harsh coding feedback he received from his “idol” into a Batman origins story:
“I turned my hatred into a burning passion”, it’s a daft post, and he did actually admit he was wrong in 2015,
so I'm not going to hold it against him. But I don't think he thought about the feedback enough because we
ended up with this mess regardless. It’s hard to fully empathise with him, because to me it seems he must
have apprehended these problems in advance, and pushed on regardless.
Instead by going for the quote “low hanging fruit”, it meant that the problems with his style didn’t become
apparent until after a significant amount of development had taken place, because he was so focused on that,
and it had pushed to a point where it was much harder to reverse, to the point that TinyBuild couldn't continue.
Yandere Dev himself was too stubborn to learn how to adapt, and the progress of the game has suffered for it.
However, living in this world of denial, come 2018, he decided that actually, all these factors, that are basically
self-evidential at this point, were not to blame, and actually he had his own theory. In another c
ondescending video. I don't know how he does it with that tone, called
“How long does it take to make a video game”, he presents his own version of events.
Yandere Dev: " How long does it take to make a video game?
The answer is, it depends on a large number of different factors. Such as the genre, the budget, the size of the team, the complexity of the game,
rather it's an original game or an imitation, and probably a bunch of other factors you wouldn't have considered.
It's not an exact science, you can't really create a formula that tells you exactly how long
a game should be in development for, because each game has a different set of circumstances."
TRO: Let’s break down the main points of this video then. The first one is that the length that a video game
takes to be developed, typically corresponds to the quality, he once again uses a very compelling graph to
demonstrate this, and although obviously it’s quite easy to pick out the low sample number he uses and the fact
that obviously it would not be difficult to cherry pick this at all. As a point, it’s much easier to focus on the
implication: that somehow this, as a universal rule can be applied to his game, even though he
specifically opened with the statement that there is no specific formulas for the completion of a game.
Yandere Dev: "So, we established that more complex a game is, the longer it's going to take to develop it.
Small teams usually stick to simpler games. When a small team tries to make a large ambitious game
the development can really stretch out for a large time. Do you see where I am going with this?"
TRO: After asserting that games that are longer in the making are higher complexity, particularly when they are
comprised of smaller development teams, he goes on to say that the complexity of his game, Yandere Simulator,
is comparable to a Hitman Game combined with a Persona game. He goes on to expand
on all the complexities of this game, and I’m not particularly sold.
Yandere Dev: "First, as the complexity of the project increases, it will become proportionately difficult to work with.
Every time that you add a new feature it will affect other features, create new bugs, increase the amount of time
you need to spend waiting for the code to compile, increase the loading times of the game, etc.
Something that was simple and easy to work on at the beginning can eventually become a nightmare
you are constantly wrestling with. Where, making even the smallest  amount of progress
becomes very time consuming and difficult."
TRO: It’s hard to deny that Yandere Simulator is an ambitious game in many ways, however, I certainly
wouldn’t say it’s almost as complex as two renowned games combined, particularly when a lot of the actual
results are not there. In 2017, Yandere Dev said that the simplicity on the game would be based on the amount of
support it received, implying that he was willing to compromise on certain elements.
Yandere Dev: "The scope of Yandere Simulator will be determined by the size of it's budget.
The more money we raise, the more time, work, and features we can put into the game."
TRO: But in this video he clearly implies that it will be complex regardless of the outcome and uses it as a
shield for the length that it taken to develop the game. Once again, it’s a sacrifice of realistic goals for personal
sentiments, and the condescending explanation of why everyone should deal with it.
On top of a programming argument that Thafnine has likely debunked in his part,
Yandere Dev eventually talks about mental health, a very serious matter.
Yandere Dev: "If you push yourself to work many hours as humanly possible, every single day, than eventually
you're going to burn yourself out. You'll become to exhausted and fatigued to be productive
if you work on the same project for multiple years you'll eventually get tired of it.
This will lead to a loss of enthusiasm and motivation, which will eventually cause you to become more easily
distracted and less productive. If a group of weird people on the internet decide that they feel
completely justified in treating you like garbage and your subjected to abusive treat on a daily basis
for multiple years, you'll become depressed which will effect your productivity
which all cause people to call you lazy or a scam artist, which will cause you to receive more abuse,
which will cause you to become even more depressed and less productive. Which, becomes a very ending cycle
of abuse and depression. You fanbase won't know about this for a long time because you'll do your best
to never speak of it. Eventually, your comment sections will be dominated by people who want to hurdle insults at you
and spew ridiculous misinformation  that isn't anywhere close to being  true. Maybe a hand full of people will
behave with dignity and respect, but an overwhelming number of people will be cruel and abusive."
TRO: I have to break this down because mental health, in many ways, is a subject close to my heart, but at the
same time, there are a lot of layers to this. Firstly, let’s talk about motivation, we have good days, and bad days,
I empathise there, but you also have to understand that if people feel that you are not keeping up with these
things, particularly if they’re supporting you monetarily, they’re gonna become impatient, and the problem with
Yandere Dev is he never explained himself in a way that was empathetic to people’s concerns, that was his
failing all the way back in 2016, and he hadn’t amended people’s concerns by that point either.
How about the unjustified harassment that he has been receiving, and how that demotivates him?
TRO: Now, I would agree to an extent that honestly there are people out there who
are too obsessed with Yandere Dev, and he is arguably quite the target. Nonetheless, to imply that it’s those
experiences that make you demotivated, while not being able to take a step back from the internet and seeing the
bigger picture, is a weakness that has to be partly accountable to you. Asking where these obsessive individuals
came from, as if you think they just randomly threw a dart and landed on you is dishonest. I feel that a lot of
these sentiments built from 2016 to 2015, whether they were jumped on by bad actors after a point is another
discussion. He acknowledges that this is a small minority who were going after him and he says that
a lot of the people he has interactions with are positive but never really defines those people from the harsher critics.
I’d say it’s probable that there were some people looking to stir stuff up, but it’s only because sharks smell blood,
and when some of Yandere Dev’s behaviour, and responses started coming to light, they saw a guy who
they could bait into lashing out and decimating his own image even farther. And Yandere Dev just could never
understand that. That’s the other issue I take with this: his framing, he acts like he’s avoided the drama and
negative comments, and acts like it’s all flared up out of nowhere, he says he hasn’t talked about it, but that’s just
a lie, there have been times when he’s been far too involved, and the only reason more
fans probably didn’t know is because he suppresses a lot of it. And this led me to a new point…
that honestly I think social media harmed Yandere Dev, and the simulator more than anything.
Let’s talk about it…
YouTube is not the most fun environment a lot of the time, the feedback from people can be pretty negative,
pretty depressing, and I completely empathise with how that might affect productivity, but as a game developer if
you’re prone to responding badly to negative criticism, maybe a YouTube channel,
and multiple social media accounts wasn’t the best idea.
That doesn’t justify any harassment and I want to make that 100% clear,
but from a personal perspective, it’s clear that Yandere Dev can’t help himself but try and respond, whether that
criticism valid or not, and when he can’t respond to it, he’ll just try and censor it. The video that we just covered,
in spite of its rather significant view count, only has approximately 740 comments, with a distinct lack of critical ones,
even polite ones. And you’re gonna have a hard job convincing me that no-one critical posted anything
remotely nuanced. At one point, it had 72 comments off over 800,000 views...
Another place where censorship has been documented is a Reddit for Yandere Simulator, where many had been
critical of him. At the end of 2018, it was alleged that he had bought it, although the exact words in the Discord
post were “in exchange for compensation”. In the past, Yandere Dev had attempted to quash the claims against
him by making a post on the subreddit, admitting he had attempted to buy it, but clearly this was not enough, with
many people rebutting him at that point, alongside one now censored comment comprehensively responding,
sharing some evidence of Yandere Dev in a less than positive light, while proudly stating that they were
pleased the reddit wasn’t bought, however, this did not last. In the end, he purchased it, what was the price?
Three thousand dollars, for a subreddit, let that sink in. He had attempted to make his own subreddit too,
but it seems that this was not enough due to the volume of people on the other one.
Yandere Dev had made it no secret that he was not particularly fond of the Reddit community,
in fact, he often doesn't seem fond of many communities.
But as his post announcing this was quite daft. Telling a story of a person who had manipulated administrators
of the subreddit into believing that Yandere Dev was an evil person, and then this harassment spread like a disease
and it’s all become too much for him as a person. He writes: “What other game developer has had to deal with
this”, it’s become anxiety inducing to even look at the subreddit. “Can you name any other game developer who
has had to deal with this nonsense”. All these other subreddits are just so lovely, and they don’t have
these issues, why does Yandere Dev just received this unprovoked backlash?
Looking at the archives, it’s clear that there was a lot of drama on this subreddit, and if you want to keep your
subreddit away from drama I’d understand. In August I found posts about how they were gonna decrease
discussion of Yandere Dev, and create a new dedicated Reddit for him. Sounds peachy!
However, it seems that a majority of what Yandere Dev was alleging had happened earlier in the year, and the
most popular criticisms, although quite scathing, weren’t really harassing, although,
it’s hard to tell exactly as a large majority of them have been deleted.
However, I did manage to dig up some of the censored posts, mostly following his “How Long” video, and a lot
of the posts are pretty concise, and some are just responses. Nonetheless, one trend I did notice was the
promotion of a Patreon boycott following that video, and in that month, it seems like Yandere Dev lost over 1,000
dollars in Patreon money, which probably bothered him a lot. There was also a Karma court case, which is like this
court in Reddit. I don’t think they have any legal jurisdiction but it’s a thing, I’m not gonna pretend to understand it.
You guys do you.
To summarize, there was some bs happening, to what extent I’m not sure. His comments weren’t the most
encouraging. Yandere Dev wasn’t really interested in whether the criticism was well structured or whether it
was harassing, regardless of how he frames it, yes, at the end he states that any public criticism of him can
only be done in bad faith as it means you’re trying to stir up drama,
and if you do have any other criticism of him, you should email him.
Now, if you don’t - want your subreddit to be about criticism against you, you’re the boss, it’s a subreddit not
a democracy, and that's waht I always say about these things. But with the context of the criticism that he’d
been receiving, to many people, this justification once again did not seem concerned about harassment, but
more about the desire to control a narrative, rather than focusing on the damn game. I have a hunch that Yandere
Dev felt that a lot of the criticism were mostly by people pretending to care, and that it was a slippery slope to
some of the harassment that he claimed to have been receiving, but for many that just won’t cut it.
The reason why public criticism exists, even on a personal level, is because Yandere Dev is a person
asking for money and support on the basis of trust in his character that he will deliver a game, and if people feel
that game isn’t going to be delivered and that people’s money should be better invested elsewhere, then they
100% have a right to say that publicly because that is in the interest of every single person who has invested time or money into your project.
Now, once again, although presenting himself as a very busy person, Yandere Dev managed to find time to
moderate this subreddit, many of the critical posts disappeared, and in spite of Yandere Dev’s claims, he
was very involved in the control of what appeared on his reddit, because managing a subreddit is definitely what
a person under time constraints to create a video game should be doing.
Yandere Dev was very blessed to receive positive feedback on his game back in 2014, and I can
understand that, when faced with this support, he decided to try and use social media hype to maintain
momentum. However, he should have restricted his interactions to maximum to YouTube uploads for what
he was trying to do, maybe if he was a bit better at responding to criticism consistantly
then he would’ve been able to engage on other mediums, but there’s a reason a large majority of game
developers, even indie game developers do not rely on public sentiment as buoyancy for a game alone.
However, I have a feeling that Yandere Dev was aware, because as we saw with TinyBuild, he would have trouble without the public support.
The fact is that, in spite of Yandere Dev’s narrative of personal persecution, a majority of YouTube audiences
are a lot of less pedantic than industry experts funnily enough,
and that fact was why a lot of the criticism didn’t appear until much later when people started looking at it with a
more critical eye, if he had taken this concept to a larger developer or industry player early
on then he probably would’ve received some sharp technical criticism that could have averted these issues
later on if he listened to them, of course. And in all fairness, in spite of the volume of criticism he has been
subjected to, his videos are still relatively popular, people are still engaging with his content,
and the one thing that he hasn’t censored, the like to dislike bar, is still heavily in his favour.
It seemed like his tactics had worked in a way. Although I feel that this would have been less of a big deal if he
just hadn’t engaged in it at all, he was certainly able to prevent the narrative to the heart of his core support
base. I make that statement with a level of reservation, because his Patreon, which is probably a barometer of
those closest to the game, shows a lot of lost faith, with it being less than 50% than the amount at its peak.
It seems that there are a lot more viewers who perhaps find more entertainment value in watching videos, rather
than directly monetarily supporting development of the game. Although Patreon isn’t his only method of income,
and he does also stream and collect YouTube ad rev, which would be an impressive amount if all his videos
are monetised, although they probably aren’t.
PewDiePie: "Okay, so we can attack this lady... Oh My God, Jesus F***ing Christ."
In many ways, Yandere Dev managed to shelter a lot of people from the criticism that he received,
and if not, he managed to hold them to one side of the narrative.
However, the roots of the problem seem clear to me. In light of the shortcomings of the development of Yandere
Simulator, people began to become restless, and that restlessness has manifested into certain behaviours,
some of which are rational, and some of which are irrational,
but Yandere Dev’s response was often less than rational. Let’s begin to wrap this up.
This video has gone into a lot of detail about the failings of Yandere Dev, now I’ve laid it out, I hope it’s clear to see
why certain decisions have led him to the ultimatum. It’s a classic snowball situation, one where neither the
creator, nor his critics, and sometimes more obsessive followers, were prepared to yield, so it escalated.
And when these situations transpire, one of the inevitabilities is that commentators are going to pick up
on it. Now, going back to the start of 2018, this was definitely part of the attention that really bothered
Yandere Dev. The video that was the harshest was “The Rise and Fall of Yandere Dev”, a two hour saga that spent
a decent amount of time going through a lot of his worst old posts in crippling detail. It probably did upset
Yandere Dev given how he’d hope it was behind him, and how he probably felt he had responded, and he had to a
degree. He wrote a lot of posts on his Tumblr, attempting to “Clear Up Misunderstandings”. I think
some of his posts do clear up certain issues, but there are also two problems with his responses.
Firstly, the structure: it would often involve him quoting, without any context, this could allow him to create
strawman arguments at will, and obviously reading it many would argue that he did. The responses were quite
general, and thus never gave a sense of closure to a lot of specific situations that occurred. Secondly, the
responses weren’t easy to find; they were on his Tumblr but they were spread out, and hard to follow, if you
wanted something specific, good luck. By doing this, it gave me the impression he was typically just appealing
to the fans he already had, who would hear what other people are saying through Yandere Dev as well rather going directly to those sources,
and on top of his other comments, such as the ones made on his Reddit post, I think he often viewed his public critics as beyond conversion.
Fair enough, but pushing away your critics requires your audience to have some faith in you, and as said, although he has an audience,
financial support have taken a hit, through organised boycotts, and other creators spreading publicity. His
responses often hit the weak point of being too vague to provide himself reasonable defence, but existent enough
to draw more attention to him. Other commentators jumping on this didn’t help his plight, often looking with a
critical eye towards his rash nature. I’ve also tried not to harp on the content of these old posts too much, but it
doesn’t help that some of them are pretty unnerving. Even though, as I acknowledge, they were done a long
time ago, that point his sporadic and even dismissive responses, would obviously sour many people.
Now I wanted to spend this final, or nearly final part, god please let me finish, talking about this, because towards
the end of 2018, Yandere Dev continued to reflect on the criticism and hate that he had been receiving,
and decided to make an over 20 minute video addressing it called “Hate and Shame”.
Not the most valuable usage of one’s time, but I digress. The video is an interesting one...
Yandere Dev: "Imagine that someone decided to take all of these embarrassing moments from your
past, put them into a list and show that list to his friends. Then, he claims that this list represent you.
Hi friends believe him, and they develop a twisted mental image of you. They perceive you as a caricatures
of who you really are with all of your flaws greatly exaggerated. Unfortunately for you, their hobby is
ridiculing and shaming people and they decided that you would be a fun target, and they start stalking you.
They follow you everywhere you go, taking pictures of you, recording videos of you, and digging through your trash
to look for anything embarrassing you might have thrown away. Sometimes they even try to directly provoke you.
Because, they think it's funny if they get a reaction out of you. If you're an artist, they'll claim that you're bad at painting.
If you're a chef, they'll claim that you're bad at cooking and if you're a programming, they'll claim that you're bad at writing code.
I assume this is meant to be an analogy, though it’s hard to tell. The “Hate and Shame” video is basically 22
minutes of Yandere Dev talking from this disconnected perspective about his own personal experience, his
purpose here clearly is to try and make people empathise with him and maybe give some advice.
I was gonna say that his video shows a failure to distinguish between the online world and the real world,
but he then goes on to talk about real world harassment that he alleges to have received.
Yandere Dev: "After enough people have been convinced that you're an awful, terrible person who deserves to be
ridiculed and scorned, you'll begin to receive some harassment, prank calls, weird things being mailed to your house,
getting spammed with pictures of animal abuse and bestiality, being stalked in real life."
The video made me feel two things: sad, and manipulated. It’s a depressing video, and this could be
how Yandere Dev interprets the situation, he has this status that would obviously not make elements of the
internet enjoyable, and there is a lot of personal stuff out there, but I also find it very manipulative, the use of
generalisations, vagueness, and purely anecdotal content, personally rub me the wrong way.
And I get that the internet can be a pretty toxic place, it sucks that there are always people out there, a little too
obsessed with you, and with something like Yandere Simulator, the sort of cult like status it acquired, it’s very
easy for one of those avid fans to become sour and then be on an all out crusade to get you, probably bolstered by
some real sycophants on the more menacing sides of the internet, and that will probably spill into your real life.
So, I'm not saying for certain that will happen, but at the same time, my God, you don’t feed the trolls,
Yandere Dev was practically providing them with an all you can eat buffet. In a later post he stated that his video
on emails actually led to an increase in emails, so I don’t know why he thought that a video on this topic would lead to any sort of de-escalation.
These videos also had a tendency to sprayfire at their targets. Although in a later post, Yandere Dev would
claim that his video was mostly directed towards these trolls and harrasses, he draws a clear link between the
people who have criticised him as also those who are responsible for the harassment, implying that they are
the people who go out and do that harassment. Although as mentioned, it’s likely these were quite
different parties due to the altering motivations and goals that would come with it. On top of this,
parts of this video seem to encompass points more general, attacking YouTubers who have spoken about
him, using video titles to reference creators like Kappa Kaiju, and Thafnine,
while calling out their approach to making their videos.
Yandere Dev: "Channels that are dedicated to making videos ridiculing and shaming other people.
These youtubers make money by degrading, debasing, and defaming others. Eventually these youtubers will
hear what the gremlims are saying about you. and them they will start making videos about you. It doesn't
benefit them to portray you with accuracy and honesty. It benefits them to exaggerate your flaws
and depict you as a cartoonish character of who you really are because that would be more entertaining.
And will result in more clicks and views, maximizing their ad revenue. If they were really interested in
telling the truth, they would contact you directly and ask you for your side of the story. However, none of them will ever do this."
TRO: I think ultimately the problem with this video, and the problem with all of this drama, is that he skips
a key part of responding to drama, and it’s ultimately why he ended up in this mess; that is evidence. I know
people like Kappa Kaiju, and Thafnine, they may not be Gods or Gurus, they may not be the all seeing eye.
I’m not either, but they don’t go out with the intention of crucifying people, they go with what they’re given, and
at that point they have very little from Yandere Dev, you can’t just say “Oh if they really want something they
should email me”, if you’re not prepared to put something out there publicly,
why should they trust you in private with it? I’ve trusted people in private before and it has cost me.
If you don’t have anything publically revolutionary to say to the drama, don’t say anything at all. Yandere Dev
always wanted to talk about it, but never had anything to actually say, and fortunately, his audience recognised
that. Because at the end of this “Hate and Shame” videos, he conducted a poll, asking whether he should
make more videos regarding this issue, oh God, or whether he should leave it behind and focus on the
game. People voted pretty conclusively for the latter, the game. And I think that’s something of importance to note
regarding this video, it is once more, an appeal to his already existent audience on what he should do about
drama, if you don’t like Yandere Dev, you’re not gonna like this video, and boy some people did not…
There were a load more criticisms about him deleting comments, including this video that shows them being
removed in live time, once again, even mild ones. There was a person who claimed to be the original artist for the
video who had their own comments to make about the Dev’s behaviour. Ironically, yet unsurprisingly, this video
about drama, caused more drama. I’m not going to rule out the idea that Yandere Dev may have experienced
some legitimate harassment at the hands of trolls, and he has regularly cited this as the reason for why he had
behaved in a rather erratic way and even toxic way himself.
Nonetheless, I feel that this can only be used as a defence up to a point, because his short-tempered
demeanour was existent prior to the escalation of the drama that he had argued to be engaged in, and his
behaviour has extended beyond the erratic and emotional into the calculated. It just reaches a point
where you line all the drama up and it becomes hard to say that these are as isolated as he claims them to be.
I don’t doubt that Yandere Dev probably has had many positive interactions with his audience,
and I’m not going to argue against that point, but even in context with Yandere Dev's great character,
the negative interactions held a significant frequency, and relevance to the discussion at hand.
A lot of the video was once again focusing on what he was experiencing rather than any actual response to the
points against hii\m, and maybe we would’ve received a more concise response if people had voted for it, but I
don’t know how he could respond to the various criticisms that escalated throughout the year, such as the
volunteers who claimed he wasn’t treating them well enough, the Discord users who claimed he’d just
spontaneously banned them for no discernible reason, the people he flipped out at over email and whatever
other communicative mediums. Since then he has reiterated the idea that the harassment was what caused
him to behave in such a way. If he believes the harassment placed him in a negative state of mind that
predisposed him to behave in such a way, then what else would he have added in additional videos?
I think for the benefit of him, his audience,  and for anyone involved, it was best left there...
So what’s happened since then?
Well, the only point of interest in this is what is known as the “Debunk” page, which provides running updates to
criticisms that he’s been receiving, it’s certainly more nuanced than his previous responses and one thing I did
appreciate was that he seems to recognise those who are frustrated with the game’s development in a nuanced
way, though I'm not sure how he treats that attitude publicly, and I do feel that such an approach is prone to
to miscategorisation, and I’d stress that it’s always best to side on the benefit of the doubt when dealing with c
ertain criticisms. As yu, the viewer, you are more than at liberty to check out these responses as they’re probably
the most composed Yandere Dev has been, although I would stress that many have taken issue with them still,
and made videos of their own. I find the response page rather defensive, and although definitely more refreshing,
not really a deviation from his older narratives that I would still personally take issue with.
The point is that when dealing with drama, if you don’t have anything that’s gonna turn perspectives on its head,
particularly when your content is being well received otherwise, it’s not sensible to make videos obsessing
over the situation. In a Discord post he said everything was gonna worsen, first 20% dislike bar, then 30% dislike
bar, then 50%, 100%, 1000%, everything was gonna fall apart and the game would be cancelled and no one would support him anymore
but wait, it didn’t… why not??? Let’s end this.
*Music*
Yandere Dev acted like he was on the verge of losing everything, yet even at its lowest his videos were backed
up by a strong, dedicated audience. There are only two ways that losing momentum of his size could happen.
Firstly, if someone makes a well-written devastating exposed video or post and completely turn public
perception on its head, or if people in general become disillusioned or bored as a whole and stop supporting.
The first one didn’t really happen, the only well organised videos were fairly mild mannered and others were not
well produced enough, so the second, but that didn’t really happen either. There were disillusioned people, but
not that many of them, and even fewer who were actually taking part in what he accused people of, people
who wanna spread criticism of your game don’t want to harass you because that would compromise their own point.
Providing that happened, that was likely mostly trolls who latched onto the disillusion as an excuse to cause
havoc. A lot of attention on the drama was generated by Yandere Dev himself, and although the minority was
quite vocal at points, its reach was limited to certain domains, only being boosted when Yandere Dev would
respond himsself. Let’s be clear, the people who said “shut up and focus on the game”
were doing Yandere Dev a massive service, and he should have listened sooner.
*Music*
For a bit it did tail off, but it flared up again at the start of 2020, with what seemed to be more completely
unnecessary drama. Yandere Dev placed his Discord server in a position where you pay to message, due to
an alleged number of raids, and although it’s his server, once again, it seems like a bad thing to be managing
himself. Someone tweeted out an interaction where they messaged him suggesting technical changes that could
prevent raids while also maintaining activity, which of course there are multiple: turn off link embeds, turn off
images, slow mode, strong moderation team, ip banning, blacklisted words. And I hate this discussion, because
eventually, when this guy clearly presents a load of solutions and rebuts, Yandere Dev just turns around and
says “actually you don’t get it”. No, my friend, you don’t get it, and I wonder if you’ll ever get it. If there are
technical solutions to a problem you can’t appeal to some greater level of understanding which doesn’t exist.
Some people might get past one or two blocks, but Discord has a load of settings and bots that can be used
to prevent such activity without using a paywall. Which is what it is. No semantics.
He did open it up again thankfully, but Jesus Christ, this drama has turned the Discord into a bit of a punchline,
with people speedrunning it. People see this stuff as funny, Yandere Dev doesn’t,
takes it very seriously, and then people meme that more. It's a cycle.
In a now deleted Tweet made in January 2020, Yandere Dev alludes to taking his own life, due to this harassment,
and without sounding like Tyler, The Creator, and with all respects that online work can be extremely stressful,
he needs to step back from the internet and stop engaging in it to the degree that he does. Add this to the
claim that he’s making less than minimum wage right now, which, although I personally find to be doubtful
given his revenue streams, if true, I have to wonder what his motivations even are for continuing at this stage.
There are so many posts of him involving himself with drama, DMing people, long messages, interviews, some
petty arguments. I don’t know if he thinks he needs to have this interaction to maintain interest in the game,
maybe he’s won over people in DMs, he probably has, but so many times it just gets published and shows him
as someone with an inability to communicate with basic criticism, in spite of him proclaiming his proficiency...
It’s like Yandere Dev has this almost parasitic relationship with the internet, he sees it as the only way
of maintaining the development of his game, and yet he has so much drama, and conflict. He thinks he’s
attaching himself out of necessity, than desire, and this leads to completely destructive behaviour, which he feels
he has to suffer through, but by proxy of that, make him a victim. On the other hand, Yandere Dev’s critics view
this victimhood as being exploited at every opportunity in an attempt to blanket harassment with legitimate
criticism, and Yandere Dev’s continuous failure to deliver a finished product, which for many, should have been
delivered a long time ago. If you’re a fan, then you may well sympathise with him,
but you wouldn't disagree that a lot of this has been avoidable.
And people have still been contacting me about it. I wonder if it’s because people want my verdict on the
actual progress of the game. It’s hard to say, Yandere Dev now posts update reports, but they don’t show
anything too radical, people are still waiting on the character: Osana, he seems more focused on other
developments before moving onto that. And it’s obvious that the video game isn’t going to be finished by the end of 2019,
and given his commitments, that will likely disappoint people. By the time many of you are watching this, it’ll
probably be 2020. Development still seems relatively slow, there are probably people impatient with the
progress, but Yandere Dev at leastprobably has learned to not make promises he can’t keep.
There’s no sign of the crowdfunding project yet, so I guess we’ll see how that will be received in due time.
The video game itself seems like an exhausting venture, given Yandere Dev’s desire to retain a lot of control, he
clearly feels a commitment to finish it, he doesn’t want to give up control given his investment. It’s the sunk cost
fallacy, he has sunk an investment in and isn’t willing to give it up, or compromise easily on a creative vision in
the hope that he get there, and he might get there. At the same time, continuing this will undoubtedly be a draining
endeavour, and I think it’s a justified concern to posit whether the game will ever be finished given the scale
and ambition. I’m not here to fully write anything off, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing to follow if you’re just
interested in watching the development, which I think is where a lot of his current audience stands, but I’d advise
caution on investing. With the current trajectory, it’s a risk you’d have to accept.
The whole situation became weird to follow for me, because on the one hand Yandere Dev seemed to
acknowledge that the people who may be rather extreme in their behaviour towards him were part of a small
minority, and yet, he dedicated so much time and attention to them, often Streisanding the issue. He said
that he was okay with criticism if it was delivered in a constructive way, but constantly censored public
criticism regardless of tone, implying that he perceived even well delivered criticism in bad faith. He acts like he
wants to be out of the drama, but keeps involving himself in it.
He constantly said things were taken out of context, but never provided the context that would help his case out.
I know it’s a while back, but the example that sticks out to me was that video regarding the clearly disgruntled
fan who was annoyed about his mod, after going off on him, Yandere Dev said he doesn’t regret it on the
corresponding Reddit post. In his “debunked” post said he often felt remorseful but I don’t think people ever saw
that, they just saw someone who was belligerent and arrogant.
In reality, I just think Yandere Dev was just so incredibly fragile over his public status, that after the hostility
backfired, he just went all out to suppress criticism, he’s stubborn, and a bit paranoid, and I don’t think that’s been
to his favour, often ending up in conflicts with people in his own audience. As the hype slowed down and the
Patrons dropped out he became more frantic. Although the more public nature of Yandere Dev’s involvement with
drama has subsided, the censorship hasn’t. There are a load of these situations, but probably my favourite was
a post criticising Corona-Chan (Oh God) being removed, with a person suggesting in the replies that they should
just look to this other post for a more constructive way to communicate this criticism, but that post is removed
as well.  It seems rather authoritarian, with the Dev and his admins becoming more and more obsessed with
tracking their own member’s movements, including their participation in other servers, and subreddits to read
their intentions. It feels like a cult to be honest. I’m not gonna leave many warnings in this video, because
enough information is out there for people to make informed decisions, but this sort of behaviour is gonna
create a bubble which is bound to burst and it's a really bad idea, but why is this bubble being created in such a way?
My hunch is that Yandere Dev had trouble distinguishing between fans legitimately frustrated about the
development of the game and those that he would class as “concern trolling”, people pretending to care about the
game’s best interests but having slightly more negative intent. He felt that he was being targeted, and he
probably knew that well-worded yet more biting criticism would do more damage than anything else, so he tried to
lump those people in with the harassers. The problem is that Yandere Dev often went for false positives, rather
than false negatives, which led him to lashing out at people who may have just genuinely cared about the
progress of the game. 2015 and 16 definitely saw a lot of the controversy coming from his own attitude,
2017 saw the exposure of certain technical failings, and 2018 saw an escalation in the arguments, frustration,
and angst both sides had, amounting in an eventual burnout of the drama when the fans simply told him that
enough was enough. Now we’re in 2020, I guess we’ll see how it all progresses.
Do I think he’s a bad person? I don’t know, but I do feel that his arguments regarding the progress of the game
and his abilities were pretty poor, I also think his time management was exceptionally bad. I’m not sure if he
knew they were or he genuinely believed that his game’s complexity justified the amount of time he had taken on
it, but if he’d spent half the time arguing that he was working on the game, just well, working on the game,
he’d probably have got a lot more done. You have to accept that there will be people who will go out of
their way to hate you, does it make right? No. Does it mean you should become invested in it? Also, no
I’d also say that a lot of people had completely valid quarrels with him, and although his intent may not have
been outwardly malicious, it doesn’t undermine the grief caused by belligerence, rancour, or any other behaviours
that can be attributed to this curious character. I'd say that it's probable that some people were looking
to stir stuff up, but it's only because sharks smell blood and Yanadere's behaviors and responses started coming
to light they saw a guy who they could bait into lashing out and decimating his own image even further.
And Yandere Dev just could never understand that.
You probably have forgotten when addressing his “What’s Taking So Long”,
I said that there was another option that I said we’d get back to, well let’s talk about it. Actually, I'll let Yandere Dev talk about it.
Yandere Dev: " Presently, Yandere Simulation is my full time job, I get paid to work on it.
As long as I'm getting paid to work on it, I feel obligated to pour ever second of my life into it.
As long as I am getting paid for my time, it is perfectly fair for people to complain if I don't make timely progress on the game
But... what if I wasn't getting paid to work on it. What if I closed my Patreon completely
then I could downgrade Yandere Sim from a full time job to just a hobby.
I would have no obligation to work on it for any longer than I feel like working on it.
I would have no reason to give it any more attention than I feel like giving it.
I would finally be able to play video games and watch Anime again. Nobody could call me lazy anymore.
All of my problems would be solved. But, all of my fans would hate me. Someone else would develop a
Yandere themed game to take the place of my game. I would fade from memory and all of the work I've done
from the past three years would be for nothing. It's tempting to downgrade Yandere Simulator to just being a
hobby so that I can take my life back. But it would probably be a one way street with no turning back."
TRO: Now aside from the fact he’s playing Beethoven again, (dude really likes Beethoven), it may be too late now,
but in 2017, this was the best option in my opinion. If I was a fan, I'd voted for. It’s his choice, but if he’s as pressured as
it appears, passing it on wasn’t a bad idea. I think the main concern is that it’s a decision which he would not
be able to revert, maybe he wants to prove people wrong by finishing the game, but back then, I think a quarter of
his audience understood. I’d tell him he shouldn’t listen to polls alone, but he went with the option that only 5% of
the audience voted for so I can’t really say he did. Yandere Dev sees the source of his life in this
community, but that’s the thing, there’s more to this world than a community.
I get that their is a concern you’d fade from memory, but this is no way to be remembered.
Yandere Dev and his game, Yandere Simulator is the perfect example of a social media propelled video game
when everything goes wrong. The obsession with hype over practicality, the motivation to keep it online,
the lack of expert consultation, the lucky developer who was ill-prepared, and his volatile involvement with a
passionate to a fault audience. It led to criticism which then snowballed, and led everyone to lose out.
And without his fanbase just telling him to stop, it probably would’ve gone in the direction that he said it
was going to. This current route may be less self-destructive, and I’m grateful for that, but I wonder if he’s
really learned from his mistakes, or if he’s just learned to hide the flaws better.
Only time will tell.
For now, he should be grateful that he has a relatively committed and open minded audience,
in spite of all the antics, he’s still doing okay, and if I were him, I wouldn’t take that for granted. For any other
creators slash wannabe game developers, take this as a cautionary tale, regardless of who you think is right or
wrong, there’s a lot that can be learned. Don’t let YouTube drama cost you your life passion, it’s not worth
it, and don’t think that everyone is out to get you, even if it may hurt. I hope the game is worth it.
First things first, make sure you go check out ThafNine.
He does great video essays on games, I love his work.
He got a great energy about him, and he's such a lovely guy too. I can root for that, big time.
So definitely, go and send him some love because he done a great job here.
You know, I can't thank him enough for coming in and filling in a gap that would have taken me a lot of reading
to get to grips with, so thank you on that front.
So yes, that was the video. I would like you to check out all the editors below they once again did a fantastic job
and definitely, definitely, check out their fantastic, fantastic work.
Also, want to give a special thanks to my Patreons. 10$ plus Patreons up on the screen, right now.
And I need to give a special thanks to my $50 Patreons. Somehulabaloo, Caroline, & Hypercude. Thank you so much.
It means a lot to me. Means a lot. Got a lot of love for my Patreon, 50$ guys, girls, whatever .
Very special thanks also to my 100$ Patreons, Brandon, B_More_Cool_J, and Christopher Karas.
Thank you so much for your contributions. It makes such a huge difference to the channel
and to the progress that it's making and it gives me a lot more mobility. So, I really appreciate the difference that it's making.
If you want to check out my Twitter, it is @therightopinion, Facebook @rightopinionoffcial
Discord, there, Instagram @the.right.opinion. Very fantastic names.
All those will be linked in the pinned comment.And as always, my references that I use for the video I used too.
I'm gonna die, this one was a long one. Thank you for your time.
*Music*
