u/DueSheepherder2881

Hi everyone! The mod, as promised, has been released in full with the new update and can be accessed here, with this link: https://www.germanytosave.com/

From the onset of the mod's development it has been subject to attacks from one side of the political spectrum, in a community that shuns non-Marxists. Communism and Fascism are the same sides of anti-democratic and authoritarian ideology. But that's an old grievance, and neither I nor the game are explicitly going to lecture you on that, so just play the game (if you wish), and hopefully you can enjoy the effort and work put into it!

https://preview.redd.it/q98y4y1k7cqh1.png?width=137&format=png&auto=webp&s=a6497fdf755f3aefe74feac1ad49808b4658bfaa

Your first time playing will probably take a while to load everything, give it a minute or two.
Right (Historical) Rubicon will be finished at a later point

Unfortunately, I have to write this message as an announcement of the fact that GTS will be receiving no more updates after this one. I've decided to abandon the project after a few months of working on it. The reasons for this are below.

To begin, I would easily say that the past few months, from the time the mod was released in mid-May, have been the worst period of my life in terms of mental health. Shortly after the release of the mod and what I perceived at the time to be the overwhelming backlash that it suffered I had a mental breakdown. For a week or two afterwards I had severe panic attacks and I lived in a state of extreme anxiety, and I just wanted to cry all the time. I could be eating or walking and randomly start gasping for air because all my thoughts would just make their way to the controversy online. Because it was the first time something like that had happened I thought I was gonna die and for some days afterwards I really thought I would have to be committed to a mental hospital. In the meantime some members were pushing for the mod to be banned, and the reaction from the moderators wasn't exactly encouraging either. Since that point there has always been this negative association everytime I work on the mod that just wasn’t there before the release.

Why did I react the way I did? Well, my best guess is that I didn’t want to make something that people hated. And I got the impression that some people genuinely hated what I had done, because I was being called a reactionary and the mod was being called fascist propaganda. I hope I don’t have to entertain those accusations here. Now I recognize that this is probably tame as far as political discourse on the Internet goes, but felt like everything I did was being scrutinized and it wasn’t the reception I had hoped for or even expected when I first started making the game.

I was almost certainly too sensitive, however, and I’m happy to see that in retrospect most of the criticisms were constructive. After talking with people on some improvements to the wording and historical purpose of the mod I reworded the introduction and did my best to develop the mod further in a conscientious way.

But you must realize that as a creative project, the mod was the product of many thousands of hours of work not only of my own time but also the numerous volunteers on the team. I gave up a lot of my hobbies and opportunities I could’ve taken in my first year of college to work on this project (my motivations are detailed in my initial response; everything is still true). And I more or less ended up taking a lot of the criticisms as personal attacks and invalidation of my work which I ascribed deep sentimental value to (otherwise I could not have possibly made the mod in the first place!). That was the reason for my mental health deteriorating so badly in the early weeks of release but it improved as discussion about the game tapered off.

Unfortunately there persists in the community a minority of people who cannot accept what I made to be in good faith, and beyond those a larger group who oppose discussion of the mod in general on grounds that it would “dilute the progressive nature of the community” or “invite reactionaries in”. You’ve gotten your wish; I anticipate in a few weeks when the content from the new update will have again subsided and there is no more to talk about, then the subreddit will return to normal and the community can keep discussion limited to the SPD and its mods only. But was I not clear enough in my denunciation of fascism in both the game itself and my response after the game released? I have relatives that died fighting against Japanese imperialism, victims of ultranationalism and ethnic chauvinism! Why should I purposefully want to bring these same black marks of ideology, which killed so many, as insidious forces into the community?

Presently, I’m in a much better place now and I think the work me and the GTS team have recently released is a testament to that. No amount of words can encapsulate my gratitude for the sacrifices they made for the mod’s development.

There are also some truly positive aspects of the Red Autumn community and I would also like to acknowledge their impact on me. I have become more cognizant of the importance of serious historical reflection as well as active political participation in American democracy. These are invaluable lessons, and even if I wish that I had never started this project, I am still gratified by these experiences. But I determined to do this some time ago, so I am going to be permanently leaving both development and the group as a whole for the sake of my mental health and happiness, onwards to pursue something different and hopefully much more rewarding with my life.

In any case due to my unwillingness to spend more time than necessary with the mod and its community I regret to inform everyone that the progress on translations as well as the total changes needed for multiplayer may only be too slow to be tolerated. However most of what was promised will be delivered and probably within a month.

Thank you all,

placedstone

Hello everyone, it's placedstone here, the developer of the DNVP mod. I have created a Reddit account to announce an update to the mod! The new version of Germany to Save can be played here: https://www.germanytosave.com/

Among many other changes, v1.00 brought forwards an overhauled economic system, a coalition and government system, a dynamic party system with ~20 possible parties and maybe double as many leaders, attempted mobile compatibility, and about a hundred new events, and many new achievements, already devised or recently created, bringing the current version out of pre-alpha. In addition, many, many bugs were fixed, but it's inevitable that more were introduced.

A huge thank you goes to the playtesters and content helpers who were able to expedite the development schedule and bring forwards life and richness to the development of the storyline and game. Without them, the mod wouldn't have been possible.

The mod remains an unfinished work, and the community and game would greatly benefit from your help in reporting bugs, balancing, or other content suggestions in the Discord. Thank you!