Modern SourceModding Dev-ing Problems #3 - Dramas, Backstab & Exile blog - SellFace

Hello. My name is SellFace. I'm a sourcemodder, the developer of Fremen's Foes and Modding Bleeds.

You might've already known me around the SourceModding community. Whether that be because of my projects, mod-channels in Valve Modding Community(VMC) discord server, my LambdaGeneration map competition entry called "LambdaMarine", the YouTube shitposts, or because of the recent drama I got myself into.

This drama and everything related to it is the main topic of this post. First thing I'm gonna say is that this blogpost is something I've never done before. I had to make myself recall various painful events related to the drama and focus on them in order to write them out here. I had to calm down and supress my emotions to write all this, because this article/post is the most important one I'm ever writing here, on ModDB.

Let's start with something that made all of this mess happen. My catharsis project, namely "Modding Bleeds".

Before being called "Modding Bleeds", my project initially started as an attempt of replicating Hotline-Miami's gameplay in Source through Hammer I/O and it resulted in LambdaMarine entry to LambdaGeneration's competition. The entry had silly plot which basically was "you are rebel, go kill combins". Besides that I had managed to replicate some of the mechanics from the original game. The cutscenes, combo system, level reset on player's death, weapon pickup, partially the score system and other things.

I decided to do this entry because during that time I was sick with development of FF:R and I knew I had to do some sideproject(I was previously suggested doing one, many times before). After taking 3rd place in the competition I definitely knew there was something more I could do with my entry.

I had a dream of making a catharsis project. During many months of my modding experience I was accumulating lots of various thoughts, emotions and wisdoms about the SourceModding community and the modding itself as a hobby. I thought it would benefit me if I take all my frustrations and turn them into a modification based on my LambdaMarine entry. Funfact is: I was inspired by Slave of Gmod gamemode alot, because its plot was also about the problems of a modding community of a Source game.

My main goal was to convey both my frustrations and ideas about the SourceModding and the community behind it. I wanted to portray the struggles I had and still have in this form of violent gameplay accompanied by cutscenes with dialogues.

Yes, I did an edgy self-insert, the dialogues were pretty edgy aswell, but that was the whole point of the project being a catharsis. I never bothered with making the story being well-written in terms of better readability etc. I cringe myself sometimes, when reading it, but I always remember that most part of the plot and writing was done while being heavily influenced by emotions I was releasing during development. I wanted the mod's message to be absolutely sincere.

In the end I managed to stay honest with myself, but being too focused on the emotions and having to rush the mod had made me to take careless decisions which resulted in a really devastating drama.

Last 2 levels of Modding Bleeds were made in a rush - in only 2 days, so I had no time to stop and think about any consequences that will follow after releasing it. I had reasons for being in a hurry. Moreover I was desiring to finish this project and become free from modding. Hence I left the VMC shortly after releasing it, I wanted to take a break. But, ironically, things turned upside down the moment I posted the file link.

The mod featured... quite risky and questionable stuff involving shoot ups of other communities and other things. I did expect to get backlashed for the rebel reskins, but I didn't expect any drama because of portraying shoot ups of modding communities. So those were my 2 main mistakes - being careless at the last development days and not thinking about consequences it might get me.

I can't really blame people that much for taking the mod too seriously without trying to understand its points, but I wasn't really happy after being acknowledged that I stirred up the hive so much to the point that I was forced to take actions in order to keep my project in the modlist without getting it removed.

I never supported any actual violence in the modification. Moreover, the inside-mind characters of the protagonist only judge him for commiting shoot ups. The gameplay is heavily metaphorical and shouldn't had been taken seriously. But because of the reasons above, I couldn't foresee such reaction. People really got mad over a silly Half Life modification. Atleast I managed to have the mod still remaining on the site by censoring it.

But this post would've never existed if it wasn't because of the devastating events following the drama. These events relate to the community I used to be a proud member of...

What is Valve Modding Community, or VMC for short? It used to be named as Source Modding Community(SMC) few years ago, but was renamed to avoid confusions, as it's not focusing solely on the Source engine, but GoldSource too.

The VMC is a discord server for SourceModders, it existed for quite long before I stumbled upon it.

All I can say is that according to my first impressions back in 2020, the server was pretty based. The most based one out of the rest of Source Engine servers out there. It was my first foreign and first modding community I got into. I met various people in it, some of them working on their own projects to this day, some of them had became (if I can say that?) my allies.

Just few months before the drama happened, the now-former owner of the VMC, the skunksman Renegadist stepped down from his position and transmitted the owner rights to a different person from the staff. Everyone was sure, that VMC will continue living in it's glory same as before.

But things changed when this drama happened. In VMC I had a mod-channel dedicated to Modding Bleeds, and obviously upon it's release, the according links to it were posted around.

I left VMC for a break few hours after announcing the release of Modding Bleeds. But as soon as the specific part of the community acknowledged my modification, someone started a shitstorm on VMC in my mod-channel, when I wasn't even there anymore. Most likely the mob was falsely accusing VMC of being responsible for the offensive content in the modification.

I'm amused by the cleverness of the haters for choosing to scream in a place I used to be in, instead of, like, dropping dms to me directly. It's pretty surprising that nobody actually ever sent me their complains directly, although some people said I was getting harassed over the mod. Welp, the worst thing I had to do was losing some sleep for the sake of censoring my thing.

I never wanted any of this mess to happen, if I had known, I would've wiped out the Modding Bleeds myself entirely. What also horrifies me is that more and more things in the plot of my mod were becoming accurate to the reality. The dialogues I was writing before the whole drama, whilst being influenced by heavy emotions, turned out to be more truthful than I thought.

Despite all the drama, I'm not cancelling FF:R and still plan to work on it when I'll be done with irl responsibilities, even without the feedback from VMC. That's all for today, thanks for reading.