Early access immersive sim video game Fortune's Run is on hold... due to the developer going to prison for 3 years in New Zealand. The reason? Unknown. He made a vague post about having a violent past, and his case is 5 years old. Oddly, in the past the game came under controversy for the ex-con protagonists motivation being they are sexually assaulted. For which Valve would not give a content warning due to the depiction of said event not being controversial enough according to the developer. Apparently both the devs are TRANSGENDER.
“Our protagonist’s journey is motivated by a past traumatic event involving sexual assault. For this reason, we chose to disclose both in-game and on the store page that there was mature content, and that the player would be able to opt out of direct references.” the developer explained.
“Direct references include, in the current [early access] build, a sequence where the player views one of their attackers doing the deed from the first person perspective.” The dev then gave players a vague idea of what was depicted in the game before claiming that Valve shut their game down because of the scene… But not for the reason most may think.
“According to Valve, this is not sufficiently explicit to be a reference to sexual assault. So they rejected our build again. Currently we are removing the content warning, which we feel is very wrong. Unfortunately, even doing this, there’s a very good chance the build review will not pass before launch day.”
Also previously just before this prison update, the developer talked about his wife who goes by Arachne (the only other developer on the project) recovering from a botched surgery. This surgery is unknown, I have seen references that they and the lead dev going to prison are transgender but cannot confirm this. In the prison update it is inferred his wife has left him, and does not want to work on the game anymore either.
Prison update
Previously about his wife
If anyone has more to contribute please do. A voice actor for the game refers to the main developer in their post indicating that she has been in prison before (I have used He/Him the rest of this post to refer to Dizzie. Both developers are allegedly transgender)