I think I've been unfair to this game.

Maybe I ended up believing the narrative the gaming press spun about it: That it was an educational game, an "EMPATHY GAME," a shallow work that flattened and commodified the experience it was representing for the consumption of cis people eager to pin an Ally medal to their chests. Maybe I never hated this game, but I hated the person I was when I made it: Young, dumb, and burning rapidly through the goodwill of people who genuinely saw me as a force for change in games and culture, and whom I would ultimately disappoint. Maybe I look back at this game and see someone making mistakes that I still carry on my back, over ten years later.

I don't think this game deserves that. And – this is even harder to admit – maybe I didn't deserve it either. I think I've been unfair to Anna Anthropy.

I struggled with this game, its legacy, and its position in the canon of 2010s indie games for a long time. I resented it, I rejected it, I tried charging for it, I tried not charging for it. When people asked to exhibit it, I suggested other games of mine they could consider showing instead. I charged exorbitant fees for it, trying to intimidate people out of asking. Ultimately, I disowned and disavowed the game entirely.
There was a time when, if I could have somehow erased this game from the internet entirely, I happily would have.

But I've had some conversations lately that have prompted me to reappraise the game. I don't know – I'm 40 now, and maybe I'm thinking about Legacy, and maybe the wounds I've been carrying around for the last ten years are no longer quite so raw, and maybe there's time to forgive. If not myself, than this game at least.

This game was not the mistakes I made.

This game is not the way people treated me.

This game is not the burnout I've spent so many years recovering from.

This game is actually quite humble, and clever, and thoughtful in its use of video game iconography. What a thing to say about a Warioware-inspired autobiography. It's a journal I kept during a moment of incredible, terrifying, beautiful changes in my life. Everything that happened after this game – both good and bad – is not dys4ia's fault.

Thanks to everyone who's ever told me this game meant something to them, only for me to change the subject immediately. Here it is, free, for the foreseeable future.

Protect trans kids. Protect trans futures.