War never changes. (Patreon)

This… will be a different kind of post from us. It won't be about our game as much as it will be about the ways the current war in Ukraine affects our project and our lives, and how we hope to overcome them.

Before that though, and as the title says it, war never changes. It steals lives, it destroys cultures, it poisons relationships, it breaks humanity. All of that for the sake of the elite, the wealthy, the influential. Such is the war waged today by one autocrat against a country of free, innocent people. On the pretext of "peacekeeping" against neo-nazis, Vladimir Putin decided to sacrifice everything and everyone to satisfy his insanity. A genocidal maniac, a "Red Hitler". That will be his legacy.

Needless to say, everyone in our team stands with the people of Ukraine. But unfortunately, it is not just the lives of millions of Ukrainians that Putin is hurting, not just the security of billions worldwide that his actions are threatening, but also the livelihoods of the Russian people that he is destroying. Beyond the incredible economic impact Russia is feeling right now, a component that is not talked about as much is that of the lives of independent Russian creators that right now have been all but isolated from their main source of income.

Such is the situation that Weisser Rauch finds himself in. He is responsible for every bit of artwork made for the project aside from character sprites/portraits. As of the application of the sanctions this weekend, we are now unable to use Payoneer (the service we have been using for years to manage our revenue from Patreon) to pay him. And while other services like PayPal appear to have not yet shut down transfers to Russia, this could change at any point.

Beyond the financial side, Rauch has to deal with the harsh reality of Putin's insanity: the crash of the Ruble and the pending hyper-inflation. He must secure his livelihood and security right now. He likely won't be able to work on Identity until this whole situation settles down, and who really knows when that may happen.

Fortunately, even despite all this, we are still able to work on other sides of the game, like writing the story, making music, drawing sprites, etc. We will continue to do so, which is why we have decided against pausing our Patreon. The truth is, our team relies on having a stable source of income from this project, small as it may be.

We understand that some may not agree with this decision, given that this situation may impact our ability to deliver new builds in due time, and we apologize in advance for inconveniences this may create.

On top of this, we may not stick to our planned schedule for publishing one dev diary post per month while this is going on, as we won't have the variety of content we would like to present in order to make a compelling diary post. Nevertheless, we still plan to update everyone on our progress and especially on Rauch's situation as time goes on.