Yes, many authors deleted their accounts from f95, some stopped developing their games due to toxic posts, arrogant and stupid users.
That is sadly true.
Being artistically inclined in any ways, these days, requires you to grow an armor the likes of Shardplate to withstand the negativity and hate that is thrown your ways. Many don't manage that, I am afraid, and abandon their projects because of it, leaving the world poorer for it.
Why is that so? - I hear you cry ... well gather around, kids, it's story time.
A man once wrote a novel, his first, and as he had already accomplished author's within his friend-zone they agreed to read it and give feedback. He also found other people, ones that he didn't know and who were not author's but "merely" readers. Many of them fairly prolific readers within the genre of the novel he had written.
When the response came in he was surprised at all the positive feedback he was getting. Not one of the readers, or author's had anything negatively to say about his novel. There were some issues with the consistency of the writing but all in all, everyone were absolutely impressed and quite a few wanted him to write more within the world that he had created - sparking thoughts of making a sequel.
He kept working on the novel and got the writing consistency down and after a thumbs-up from his author friends he shipped it off to a publisher. After waiting for quite some time he finally received a letter from the publisher with a scathing review of the novel.
Our author in spe took this hard and didn't understand any of this but was told by his author friends that it could be difficult to get accepted into a publishing house the first time around, and that he should just keep sending it to other publishers, because one of them would surely sign with him.
Sadly this tale is about what negativity can do to any budding artist. There were absolutely no constructive criticism in the letter from the editor, but only a tsunami of negativity and hate toward the genre and the novel. It left our hero in emotional shambles and he never did send off his work to any other publishers.
In fact he didn't write again until a great many years later after he met another author who knew of said editor. She could tell of a person who had gotten fired after being an ass one too many times in his career, especially towards new and budding authors. She gave him many a good council on how to ignore unfounded and unwarranted criticism. She explained that many artists are emotionally vulnerable and prone to bouts of depression and have a tendency to take criticism of any kind way too serious. In essence she taught him how to create and equip a Shardplate, which gave him the courage to try his hands on being creative again, and even to release it to public scrutiny and potential ridicule, hate or negativity.
Cheers - Kaffekop
, but that's beside the point)
