No Longer a Blue Robot

Notice: the following is a personal story as expressed by the author of this book. The circumstances that have political flavor to this story is the straw that broke the camel’s back. All comparisons are done for the purpose of characterizing Godot’s toxic leadership by the principle of analogy.

If you simply jumped to this page without reading the preceding chapters which explain the primary problem with Godot, you’re strongly encouraged to read the book starting from the beginning, or the Overview section at the very least.

Waiting for Blue Robot

As I’ve gained experience and kept contributing to Godot, the leadership has invited me to join their organization in 2021. This allowed me to talk on the topics which pertain to development philosophy, project governance etc. Of course, this is not to say that only privileged can talk on this topic, but my experience as a contributor empowered me to bring up those topics, as I truly wanted to improve Godot.

As I started to identify cornerstones that Godot lacks according to my research, I’ve started to receive negative responses from the project leaders. My attempts at clarifying the project’s development philosophy and governance model were met with a push-back from the leadership, saying to me in private that what I’m trying to do is unacceptable, namely from Godot’s project manager, Rémi Verschelde, saying that what I do is unprofessional. I replied that what I do is always in the interest of a consensus-building process which should not recognize compromises, because compromises lead to temporary coalitions and eventual division of community. Once I’ve explained my intention, I haven’t received a response, so I kept expressing my opinion, because it’s my right to do so.

However, after some months, Rémi removed my privileges as a maintainer. This decision was fairly unexpected. In the email I’ve received, Godot’s Project Leadership Committee in the person of Rémi decided that what I say allegedly hurts Godot’s image. Trying to appeal to this decision was impossible, since they refused to talk about this topic. The way I got treated simply did not warrant member exclusion, especially when I’ve been contributing to Godot’s development for five years straight, and my merit as a contributor was recognized by community.

Later on, I started to receive threats of ban from all Godot communities. I figured that these kinds of threats are disproportionate to situations that arise. I no longer felt safe interacting within the Godot community. This affected me to the point where I feared to express my opinion elsewhere as well. It’s like the worst possible outcome coming true! I was at the point where I was threatened in private by Godot’s lead developer, Juan Linietsky (quote):

1) Restraint yourself to only talk about technical topics and Godot development.

2) Do not talk with anyone about your opinion on things that are unrelated to technical topics. This includes your opinion about other community members, your opinion about yourself, your opinion about governance, etc.

3) Do not cite or quote anyone, for any reason, period. No citing, none, zero.

Not following these orders would lead to an instant ban, as promised by Juan. I decided not to follow them because I adhere to Godot’s open discussion principle as declared in Godot’s governance model. Some months later after Juan’s threat, I’ve received an email from Godot PLC, which contained this:

We think this attitude shows a bad image of the Godot project when a contributor who is part of the GitHub organization (thus with the “Member” badge) is seen arguing with other Members and at times overruling their positions.

The mere idea of members within the GitHub organization engaging in debates and occasionally asserting their influence is simply outrageous! We can’t possibly allow such behavior to tarnish the pristine image of the Godot project! Everyone involved in a collaborative project should share the exact same opinions and never dare to challenge each other. How dare these “Members” engage in healthy discussions and express differing viewpoints? It’s almost as if they are exercising their right to independent thought and intellectual discourse! Unacceptable! 🙃

I hope you appreciate my emphasis on absurdity of Godot leadership. Jokes aside, it’s as if they must maintain an illusion of unity at all costs! As if disagreement or conflict instantly signifies a project’s failure and inability to function properly. Tribalism at its core!

They are afraid that someone will think bad of them, as if an opinion of a single person could destroy the entire project. Due to this, they tried to bribe me by giving a “Member” badge, but I wasn’t actually interested in any of that. And because giving a “Member” badge didn’t stop me from talking on topics related to, say, development philosophy, they just decided to take it away:

We decided to remove you from the organization for now. The “Member” distinction bears a lot of weight, and is thus also a responsibility to be a good representative of the project.

Eventually, they permanently banned me from all Godot community spaces, under a pre-text that you’ll find out by the end of reading this story.

Victimhood of Blue Robot Cult

Hello, my name is Andrii, and I’m addicted to Godot.

This is the first step. It took me years to realize this. In fact, I realized this as soon as leaders started to ostracize me from the project. I think most people that stumbled upon this in Godot would decide to leave the community on their own (and that’s exactly what Godot leadership does, they first point to a door). But I decided to stay, because:

  • I exercise my right to freedom of speech.
  • I cannot let a group of people employ abusive tactics.
  • I decided to learn how to deal with toxic leaders once I recognized them.

The entire situation led me to study psychology which allowed me to recognize manipulative behavior, and the existence of this book is a testament to my words.

The Godot community jokingly refers to this addictive phenomenon as “godotitis.” However, let me assure you, this is a serious condition! If you find yourself suffering from “godotitis,” I strongly recommend disconnecting from the internet for a while. This is not a matter to be taken lightly! It serves as a defense mechanism when they humorously refer to the community’s cult-like aspects within Godot. If taken seriously, more people might break free from the comfortable illusions they have created for themselves.

There are numerous reasons why I decided to participate in and continue being a part of the Godot community. These reasons include:

  • Gaining experience in game development and open-source projects.
  • Feeling a sense of belonging within the community.
  • Accessing a free game engine!

However, I eventually became a follower of Blue Robot. I used to have an unnoticeable aversion towards individuals who advocated for engines other than Godot or criticized Godot itself. My perspective was that these individuals were firmly entrenched in their familiarity with their existing tools, making them reluctant to embrace GDScript or explore new possibilities.

I used to dismiss anyone who claimed that “Godot is a cult” as simply envious of the engine. In my mind, those who opposed Godot were merely negative individuals. I firmly believed that Godot was the ultimate game engine, destined to become “the next big thing” akin to a gold rush; all we needed was a little more time. Consequently, I held the notion that it would be ideal for Godot to become the sole open-source game engine available, thereby allowing the development of a unified ecosystem of tools and plugins.

Reflecting on it now, I realize that this perspective appears naïve. However, that’s precisely what I used to believe.

Escaping Blue Robot Cult

The war allowed me to see everything crystal clear. The war breaks illusions.

Talking about Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was actually the cause that lead to my permanent ban in Godot as well. On 24 February 2022 at approximately 4:30 AM, I’ve heard loud explosions. My heart started to beat like hell with each explosion. Later in the morning, I turned on my PC and I saw the news. I contacted my friends online, and of course entered the Godot chat to notify the community about this event… I said:

Russia started to bombard Ukraine. I live in Ukraine. Stay strong fellows.

I did not mention anyone specifically. Almost immediately, Rémi reacted to my message, saying:

I hope you and your loved ones stay safe. This is such a horrifying situation, there’s no words.

Of course, “there’s no words”. Just like a hypocritical politician, Rémi wanted to save his face in the situation where he just removed my privileges months ago. The fact that Rémi was the first one who replied to my message means that he put myself in the watch list in order to surveil my every action in Godot, I was already on their radar.

Several weeks later, Bucha massacre happened. When the battle for Kyiv was over, I decided to visit that place. I saw everything with my own eyes.

My mind was so focused on the war and survival that I stopped interacting with Godot community. I realized that my life is more important than just being part of some online group. But at some point I decided to contact Juan to express all my feelings and my relationship with Godot. I already knew at that point that Juan is a skillful gaslighter (you can figure I was very tolerant of their behavior).

I started my conversation with him on this topic:

Essentially, I wanted to let him know that if they don’t welcome me within the Godot community, perhaps they would be interested in cooperating, and I’d lead another project, so that most useful unmerged and rejected features could have their place somewhere, especially this is how other open-source projects tend to cooperate, where a project promotes useful addons in order to build and consolidate the community around it. His reply was this:

There is zero incentive from the Godot project to promote features that were not merged (yet or ever). I’m pretty surprised about your perseverance on this topic for so long. I think I already made it clear that we will not recognize your project nor allow you to do strong promotion of it using our own resources. I have no idea why you believe you can convince me or “find a way or a backdoor” into this. You will not find any no matter how hard you try.

Juan’s defensive reaction was unwarranted, considering Godot’s project manager’s claim that there’s only “we”, implying that there’s no hard distinction between official Godot and its community. Competition or promotion wasn’t my intention or argument. I created the community-driven Goost project to complement Godot. However, regardless of expressed intention, they perceive such projects as a threat to Godot.

This is because community-driven projects like Goost provide additional features for free, which likely goes against Godot’s agenda to “complement” Godot through their commercial for-profit venture, W4 Games, which they co-founded without the knowledge of the Godot volunteers, contradicting Godot’s non-profit nature. At that time, no one was aware of their plans. According to this post, Pablo Selener, the managing director of W4 Games and a former employee at Epic and Tesla, is a school-age friend of Juan Linietsky, who is a co-founder of Godot. You can read Pablo’s post that aims to attract Unity users.

I told him that if he didn’t want to discuss this topic, I asked him to inform me about this, and honestly, the reason I continued talking about it for so long was because I was in a bomb shelter. I decided to distract myself, so I let him know about this. He responded:

I can imagine its hard and you have my support.

I asked:

What kind of support are you talking about?

He said:

I mean that I totally understand the situation you are in, and that it can be very stressing, and that you are a victim in all that is going on. I don’t think there is a lot I can do for you specifically [emphasis added], but I meant to say that I fully believe what you are going through is real.

Then I told him that I’ve already figured this out! I don’t need an external confirmation that what I see is real, as I see the war with my own eyes. That wasn’t helpful. For some reason he started to explain why they haven’t banned me so far, and that I should be thankful that I still keep interacting in the Godot community. He said:

If you cross the line you cross the line and we won’t be able to protect you.

I have found his rhetoric quite disrespectful, and when considered with other reprehensible behavior of Juan in Godot, and in the context of war that we’ve been talking about, I couldn’t resist to compare his own rhetoric to Putin’s one! Then he said:

The project is fine without you, it does not need you attacking the leadership to try to change things and just like nobody backs Putin in Ukraine, nobody backs your point of view within Godot.

So really, don’t do these stupid comparisons when it’s obviously the opposite for you.

What he said was problematic on so many levels!

  • All I wanted to do is to be able to freely share my opinion. I feel sympathy for people who had to go through the proposal process, make a pull request for a feature, and get rejected. So I wanted to find a way to help those people find a place. The Godot leadership could avoid all problems by literally leaving me alone with ideas that I published publicly, or they could choose to just ignore me; in fact, I rarely reached out to project leaders, I mostly talked to community.

  • There exist numerous people who back up my point of view. So it’s just a blatant lie. See for instance the Development Philosophy proposal, even when such people don’t always express explicit support.

  • I advocate for open discussion, the principle that Godot publicly declares on their website. If people are restricted in the way they must speak, then that’s not what constitutes an open discussion.

  • Godot leadership must not forget that their so-called organization has entered the democratic world. Godot is not the center of the world!

Incidentally, the entire Godot community reminded me of Orwell’s “1984”! Recall the Thinkpol? I’m just a dissident and an extremist in the eyes of Godot leadership! But I have absolutely no power other than being able to influence people with words.

So, their structure of logical reasoning comprises mostly of manipulation. This kind of reasoning may be interpreted as a powerful charisma, unfortunately. Putin also presented himself as a quite charismatic and a loving person to the entire world, until he decided to attack Ukraine. The problem is that Putin is still seen as a hero by some. That’s how powerful brainwashing could get.

Later on, I said to him that my behavior is the behavior of a free person, and he does not have any right to restrict my way of expression. I also mentioned that this kind of attitude is an inherent trait of a lot of Ukrainians, due to our culture and mentality:

You say that Godot is a “Worldwide organization”. So why do you think that you’re entitled to impose a particular behavior as you please?

We, Ukrainians, fight for democratic values now [emphasis mine]. It appears to me that you were raised in a country with quite totalitarian laws. Apparently, you have a long way to go.

Context: Juan was born in Argentina, a country that tends to align with a pro-Russian stance. For instance, on February 3rd, Alberto Fernández, the President of Argentina, stated, “Argentina has to be Russia’s gateway into Latin America.”

Then, Juan said:

This has nothing to do with Ukrainians, this only has to do with you

Don’t shield yourself in people who are suffering

If you behave in an unacceptable way, it’s about you, not about Ukrainians.

You don’t represent Ukrainians to me. [emphasis added]

I thought: “Wow…”. I hope you understand what he said was unacceptable:

  • I am suffering from the war.
  • I am an Ukrainian, a citizen of Ukraine, have an Ukrainian passport, and even authentic Ukrainian surname. I’m a Cossack descendant!
  • I do represent Ukrainian culture and values. In the context of what I said, that’s exactly what I conveyed.
  • I do represent Ukrainians in Godot community. I was pretty much the only active Ukrainian maintainer in Godot.
  • Even if we assume for a moment that I’m an ass, he still has no right to say anything like that as a project representative.

There’s even a blog post published on February 25, 2022, that says, [emphasis added]:

I don’t know if anyone from Ukraine is going to read this, and there’s not much I can do anyway, but still: Stay safe out there in this fucked up times. I know of at least one Godot contributor from Ukraine, Xrayez, and I hope he’s alright. And fuck Putin

When people think about Ukraine in relation to Godot, the first thing that often comes to mind is my role as a Godot contributor. In light of this, ask yourself: Am I effectively representing Ukrainians within the Godot community?

A year ago, Juan said to me:

Not pissing others off is more important than trying to understand others.

But he failed not to piss me off! 😁

From that moment on, taking into account other questionable and outright unacceptable behavior of Godot leadership, I decided that I’d never contribute to Godot again. However, due to my addiction to Godot, I’ve found various excuses to continue using the product.

Russians and their influence on Godot leadership

💡 I’m not against Russians specifically. I’m against everyone who kills people of Ukraine, and I’m against everyone who justifies actions or inactions of Russian citizens that keep supporting Putin’s regime, who are collectively responsible for letting the war happen. Unfortunately, the majority of people who live in Russia do support the atrocities that happen in Ukraine now, and some Russians around the world infect other people with fascism propaganda. I know this as an Ukrainian.

There exists one Russian member in Godot, called Yuri Sizov, who possesses a strong obstinacy and promptly dismisses any opposing viewpoints. Additionally, Yuri tends to embark on prolonged rants and discussions in an effort to prove others wrong. Regrettably, Yuri has been engaging in harassing behavior towards both myself and other members within different Godot communities. Several individuals concur with my sentiments regarding this matter.

When I said anything that he interpreted as offensive, Yuri would report on me to Rémi or Juan, and I’d get bullied: “You cannot do this. If you keep doing it, you’ll get banned”. But when I explained how Yuri’s behavior is problematic, Rémi would say: “I don’t see nothing wrong with what he says or does. I realize that he can be a little confrontational, but he can say ‘fuck all who think otherwise’ if this is done in good faith”.

That Russian member joined Godot community in 2020. I’ve been contributing to Godot’s development for like three years at that time, and Godot’s leadership haven’t even recognized my effort (I didn’t expect nor asked for this), while it took him only like a year to get full write access to the repository and get special permissions. He was accepted into the inner Godot cult with ease! It may sound strange, but his offensive attitude to people allowed him to do this! By offensive I also mean defensive, since he worked hard to spread the word of Godot and shut down everyone who “spread misinformation about Godot”, according to his words.

Rémi has recognized that Yuri and me “seem to have frequent tensions,” so he suggested me to contact him via PM. So I did. To summarize, Yuri ended up blaming me that “I’m the cause of all conflicts, and he wondered why”, basically repeating the same slander that he likely heard about me in a private channels at Godot Contributors Chat. The most interesting part was his last words. He said (translated from Russian):

And don’t speak to me using “Mr.”, we’re not in Verkhovna Rada [emphasis added].

For your information, Verkhovna Rada in Ukraine is equivalent to the United States Congress in USA. What kind of insinuation is this? Well, he was perfectly aware of existing conflict between Russia and Ukraine and that I’m an Ukrainian. Why would he find it absolutely necessary to touch politics? That was in 2021.

He changed his nickname right after Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. I didn’t realize why, but according to his Twitter, he said that he doesn’t want to be associated with the war. Turns out that, if you read his old nickname “pycbouh” in Russian, interpreting Latin symbols as Cyrillic, as in “PycBouH”, this literally means: Russian Warrior! Problem: “Russian Warriors” call me “Ukrainian Nazi.” A lot of questions, so I kept researching.

I’ve stumbled upon a news article (2021):

Kefir is a Russian game development studio. Everything seemed to be fine, until I read the quote presented there. The author of that quote is Alyosha Stalin - Chief Business Development Officer at Kefir, from Volgograd. Here’s an explanation of the name:

  • Stalin is a Soviet political leader and dictator who caused massive genocide called “Holodomor” of Ukrainian people.
  • “Stalin” is not a Russian surname. It’s a pseudonym for “Man of Steel”, similarly to “Lenin”.
  • “Alyosha” is just a byname of the full name “Alexey”.

This means that Godot has accepted a donation from someone who adores Stalin. Does that mean Yuri is from Kefir as well? I don’t know. My point is that Godot appears to attract Russian game developers. Why? Because they likely share the governance model of Godot and find it as a perfect environment where their behavior can be tolerated, and where their behavior could even thrive!

Goodbye, Blue Robot Cult

My final day at Godot was at the moment when I watched a video by our Ukrainian spokesperson Oleksii Goncharenko. I shared the video at #coffee-break channel at Godot Contributors Chat, and presented it as an example of free opinion voicing.

Some minutes ago, someone from Godot members said:

Well, the main conclusion I seem to draw is that you are trying to make a connection with your exclusion from the [Godot] org with things that are quite different and an order of magnitude more impactful. I think it’s a quite an unfortunate comparison, which, in a way, kind of make the point of the [Godot] PLC decision.

Do you see how they refuse to accept any kind of analogies? This kind of manipulation technique allows them to sustain the current status quo, and this allows to defend their cult from the outside intervention. This way of thinking is apparent when Juan asks that people should not compare Godot to any other technology.

Our conversation quickly switched to the topic of human rights, and I’ve explained how Godot violates the right to freedom of speech (reminder: they forbidden me to quote anyone, under any circumstance, I’m not allowed to talk about other members and even myself).

Then, Yuri appeared! He said:

I have to say that anyone’s involvement with the project is not a part of any free speech paradigm [emphasis added]. Anyone can be directly (by a personal “firing”) or indirectly (via the established and agreed upon terms of engagement that make you quit [emphasis added] removed from the project, at least in the official capacity. There is no inherent right to contribute to Godot, so the org can oust anybody for its arbitrary reasons [emphasis added].

Again, Yuri is the official member within Godot organization, accepted by Godot leadership. The leadership agrees to what he says. Let’s see why Yuri’s stance on this is quite problematic:

  • the right to freedom of speech is seen as some kind of disadvantage (to whom?);
  • there exist procedures that “make you quit” on your own in Godot (cyberbullying, pointing to the door, boycotting, cancelling… you name it);
  • everyone should feel welcomed to contribute to the project right from the start, so people do have inherent right to contribute to Godot;
  • people can be booted from the project for any reason, regardless of morals.

Therefore, the approach described by Yuri is fairly unprofessional, no healthy open-source community-led organization would do any of those things.

He continued saying [emphasis added]:

We just choose to trust that those reasons are valid and are upheld in the interest of the larger community. Every work is based on trust, and hard as you might, trust may just disappear one day, or never appear in the first place.

Do you see how they keep fixating on trust? After my long reply regarding the Godot’s principle of open discussion and democratic world and the human rights that represent the democratic world, Yuri replied:

Godot is open-source, but it’s not just anyone’s. There are specific leaders. You either align with them or not [emphasis added].

I replied to this expression of authoritarianism this way:

What can you expect from a person who lives in Russia…

You see, I can understand why he would think that there’s no other choice. He lives in Russia, where cult of Putin and his regime does not let him express his opinion in general, not even mentioning about the war. But why this way of thinking has to be spread inside Godot, an open-source, community-driven project? Toxic leaders must be challenged, otherwise those leaders will rule the world of fascism.

He said:

I am very much anti establishment.

But Godot isn’t a country.

They completely lack ability for critical thinking! Obviously, Godot is not a country. I explained to him one important thing to realize. Due to his trouble-making, condescending, arrogant behavior in Godot community, I said:

A person who lives in a fascist country is infected by fascism and spreads it, no matter where that person is located. If you don’t believe me, google up “14 signs of fascism” and ask yourself: in what kind of country do you live?

You can verify this for yourself if you read the book called “Pandemic fascism” and listen to people such as Alexander Nevzorov, a Russian television journalist, who literally says that, being a Russian citizen, he overcame fascism within himself.

Speaking of fascism and Russia, there’s one thing that I haven’t revealed in the email that I’ve received from Rémi, which contained the following defamation:

We do think that you are well-intentioned, and we understand that you struggle with mental health [emphasis added]. But you also seem to be well conscious of your issues, and we think that you can continue to grow alongside the Godot project and better understand what kind of interactions are good, and what kind are harmful.

This reminded me of Soviet Union, where political reformers were labelled to have a made-up sluggish schizophrenia as a method to oppress the opposition. Cults also employ similar methods to further ostracize non-believers. This is because destructive cults and fascism overlap on the level of bigotry.

Anyways, they thought that I’d like to establish a democratic way of organization in Godot. But I wasn’t implying that at all. Most open-source projects are based on do-ocracy indeed. When I talk about democracy, I meant that if you enter a democratic world, you must abide to the democratic principles on the level of basic human rights.

Then one of the members said:

LOL, and what exact right did we remove you? Free speech? You are still talking here. And no one prevents you from bringing your opinion on twitter or else TBH. But even then, free speech does not apply here [emphasis added], and I really hope it will never do.

Apparently, Yuri got offended by what I said. He didn’t tell me this, but all of a sudden, Rémi appeared! He said:

It’s the second time today you’re overtly racist Xrayez. This has to stop.

There was no genuine explanation or proof of accusation. Zero dialogue. At first, he accused me of racism. Then, other member suggested another term: xenophobia. Rémi agreed that: “Maybe better term yes.” Or “extremism”, as Maria Zakharova says. 😉

They couldn’t come up with a specific accusation because they didn’t really care at this point. Moments later, Rémi said:

I give up trying to reason with you. We can’t reach an agreement on how to work together, so we shouldn’t work together. You don’t want to make things work, and you don’t want to leave [emphasis added], so the only option left for us is to ban you from Godot communities.

I said:

What next? I’m from Ukraine btw.

Rémi replied:

That saddens me because I estimate you as a person and I’m appalled by the situation you’re in your real life, but we can’t help you [emphasis added].

Ask yourself: if you were to manage an international project, knowing that there exist both Russian and Ukrainian contributors, and knowing that Russia is the aggressor that caused literal genocide of people in Ukraine (both in the past and now), what would you do in a situation like this as a project manager?

If Rémi cared about me, as the only active Ukrainian contributor in Godot, where my merit is recognized by community, he wouldn’t decide to permanently ban an Ukrainian. Is this how they express sympathy and compassion? No. This is a clear example of Putin’s rhetoric. Just a blatant lie and hypocrisy. The sympathy that Rémi allegedly expresses is the sympathy of an executioner who raises an ax over the head of an innocent person.

Yuri was likely pleased with such decision, by the way!

💡 Consider reading this thread, which analyzes Yuri’s troublemaking behavior, who is trusted by both Juan and Rémi.

Even though Rémi banned me, I do have friends in Godot community that shared this message after Rémi decided to ban me:

Note for readers: Xrayez has been banned from this platform and other Godot community platforms. This was a long time coming after many instances of discussions similar to the one above, both publicly and privately. As we mentioned above, if a contributor is really incapable of behaving in a way that’s compatibility with the existing community of contributors, they end up leaving by themselves - or being shown the door. We’re always open for discussion, and this has been discussed a lot - but at some point we need to reach a decision.

This basically means that civil discussions on Godot’s governance will definitely lead to a ban, and Rémi presented it as if I had troublemaking attitude towards Godot contributors at large, which is certainly not the case. Prior to the ban, several people in Godot community would confirm that I have shown no signs of troublemaking behavior. For example, here’s one reaction by a very active Godot user that follows Godot development quite religiously, when he found out that I’m permanently banned now:

Offtop: whoa what happened, he was one of the contributors whose handles I recognized (therefore very active) and I haven’t seen him be rude ever…?

But of course, cult leaders’ task is to suppress doubts within their cult community by spreading slander in official capacity. Other members reacted to the ban and asked Rémi:

Is it a permanent ban?

Rémi replied:

For now yes. There’s always the possibility to appeal but I have little hope in this situation.

How is it even possible that a permanent ban is temporary, considering that I am deemed “incapable of behaving” according to Rémi’s personal double standards? What about my private report of Juan’s violation of Godot’s Code of Conduct, which Godot PLC conveniently ignored? With Godot, hypocrisy has not limits.

After all above events, I did not ask to remove the ban. What I did, however, is to contact Godot leadership for an request to deliver their official stance and the reason for the permanent ban via email, just like all responsible people do. They haven’t responded. Zero dialog. Nothing at all. There was no possibility to appeal, so Rémi lied to the entire community of contributors. In other words, they cancelled me.

When I got permanently banned, do you know what I felt?

Freedom

The worldwide community has started discussing and sharing the book on social media. The Ukrainian community is extra supportive of the points I am making. Unfortunately, it appears that Godot’s toxic leadership does not seem to embrace the Ukrainian mindset and views us as confrontational. However, all we are doing is advocating for our right to freedom of speech and expression, as well as our right to exist as a nation. This support extends beyond Ukraine as well. Sadly, Godot’s de facto pro-Russian stance, rooted in Argentina through Godot’s co-founders, effectively marginalizes the Ukrainian community within Godot.

You can also read my comprehensive article on GameDev DOU, a Ukrainian community of IT specialists, written in Ukrainian: