So things have calmed down a bit in my life. While I don’t intend to argue with those who thought it was extreme to entirely delist the hack, I do appreciate that it’s coming from a place of having enjoyed something that I made, and for that, I appreciate your saying so. The thing is that I originally started working on Deity Device while being frustrated over not getting any responses from publishers and agents for several years when I tried to submit a duology of novels I had written. I kept some of the themes and character concepts and reworked it into a fantasy adventure that became Deity Device. And I think that I allowed myself to become a bit blinded by the fact that people were finally enjoying something that I had written to the point that I haven’t really written anything else since I released Deity Device other than work for the sequel, which continues to expand in scope with every idea that I have. I have much less free time now than the two years I spent working on Deity Device, and I have to face the facts that if I’m going to write something that breaks me out of my work-a-day life, it can’t come from working on a rom-hack. I’m afraid that if I leave the hacks to work on something else or tell myself that I’m putting Saint’s Blood to the side to work on other projects simultaneously, I’ll get pulled back in to devoting myself completely to Saint’s Blood whenever I see the number of downloads going up or someone leaving a comment about how much they enjoyed the story. But even if I succeeded in making Saint’s Blood the most acclaimed FE Hack ever, it would still be very limited in its reach, and it wouldn’t get me any further as a writer. This is something I agonized over, so please don’t think that the support I’ve received over the years doesn’t matter and I’m tossing you all aside. I still think rom-hacking is amazing, and I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression I think it’s a waste of time. It really hurts that there are things in Saint’s Blood I won’t ever see running in-game the way I imagined. But I have to face the reality that rom-hacking isn’t something that can change my life, and if I want to use elements of what I’ve accomplished in Deity Device, it’s best that I not leave it sitting out here. I hope that will help anyone who is still upset better understand my decision, and I hope that those of you who still have the patches will be respectful and not share them or post them on other websites.
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