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Xrayez 🇺🇦 Profile picture
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Jun 12 • 47 tweets • 19 min read
I'm a #GameDev. After working on @godotengine as a volunteer for 5 years, #IGotOut. With experience, I identified contradictions in Godot's development and governance model, then leadership started to threaten to ban me. @CultExpert may be interested.

Godot leadership removed my privileges to punish me for telling people that decisions in Godot aren't made by community. In email I have received, he even said that I have mental health issues to make me feel guilty and undermine my perception of reality.

The leader of Godot messaged me in private that I must not question the decisions of Godot leadership, forbidding me to quote other members, opinion about governance, and even opinion about myself! Otherwise, it would be an instant ban for me.

Godot presents itself as community-driven project, and constantly suggests that decisions in Godot are made by community in almost like democratic way, which is false. That's what we call hypocritical behavior. It's solely about trustocracy.

Godot's documentation says it's pure meritocracy (those who contribute useful features as seen by the community get to decide). However, when I started to question decisions, the leader of Godot tells me that Godot's development is based on trust.

The leader of Godot says that people must "earn his trust", but offers none to anyone. Perhaps we'll never know the people who do end up earning his trust for real.

But again, this is not what constitutes "community-driven" principle stated in the documentation, so some people go and suggest that "community-driven" must be removed from Godot's documentation. But Godot's leadership refuses to do so, despite requests.

They aim to shut up everyone who starts to talk negatively about Godot.

At the same time, Godot's leader keeps promoting his engine via hype, saying that they are elite and innovative. Making comparisons should be seen as something healthy, but he literally discourages people to compare Godot to any other technology.

Some professional developers that use Godot also notice that Godot leadership is acting passive-aggressive towards similar #OpenSource projects.

The leader of Godot also writes articles that aim to reinforce the false idea of what Godot represents as an organization. Some members within Godot community describe it as propaganda.

The brainwashing is apparent when they associate the image of Godot with popular movies, games, art, other software, and even politics. They say to #StopWaitingForGodot and present you with limited choices, and then you end up picking Godot.

Godot leadership and community will even make you feel guilty and obligated to "contribute back" as they say. This is very discouraging because other healthy #OpenSource communities don't have this issue.

Healthy #OpenSource projects describe their development philosophy. But Godot refuses to document it. This is because the ambiguity is what allows them to attract users from all around the world, and then they filter you out if they unable to exploit you.

Some people don't even realize that the name "Godot" refers to "Waiting for Godot", but Godot never came. The entire organization is built upon a belief system of Godot that may or may not come. This is very addictive from the psychological perspective.

People work for free in Godot. This is typical in #OpenSource, but people get deluded. Godot acts like a private company. Even then, healthy commercial companies are interested in getting feedback and accept criticism, which is not the case with Godot.

The reason why they react this way is because Godot shares a lot of cult characteristics. Just like the cult of Trump, the leader of Godot even resonates on this by showing an suggestive image, which is fascinating because they don't seem to hide this.

Talking about cult leaders, I got a conversation in Godot about fascism in Russia. Simply mentioning this topic in Godot (in coffee-break chat channel) is what eventually lead to my permanent ban in Godot. The fact that I'm an Ukrainian didn't stop them.

In fact, the leader of Godot said that he does not see me representing Ukrainians in private. This happened when I decided to tell what I think about him: what he says are lies and manipulation. He tried to make me feel guilty, obedient and miserable.

After they permanently banned me, the project manager said that it's always possible to appeal. I've sent several emails to them, but they've ignored all. This is another proof that Godot leadership is hypocritical and abusive to their contributors.

Believe me or not, quitting Godot was my semi-conscious decision. All I had to do was to tell the truth about Godot to get permanently banned. Just like mentioning "No to war" can get you in jail in Russia, in a similar way you can get banned in Godot.

Normally, I don't talk about politics. But Godot is littered with communism ideology and anti-capitalist sentiment if you pay close attention. See what kind of messages they censor:

This kind of censorship, Godot's governance model, and the way Godot leadership treated me, reminded me of Soviet Union, where dissidents were labeled to have "sluggish schizophrenia" as a tool of oppression.

The fact that I dedicated 5 years of my life contributing to Godot's development and helping others, to be only treated like a fuel, made me feel quite disappointed and sad, so I decided to raise awareness of this issue to the public at the very least.

My experience as an ex-member allows me to strongly assert that Godot is a cult for real. Turned out I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I used to think that people who describe Godot as a cult is just a joke, but this is serious and real.

I'd go as far as to say that Godot is the first #OpenSource project which can be identified as an actual cult in the IT industry. Usually, Godot attracts a lot of younger people that are more susceptible to manipulation. Professionals usually avoid Godot.

godotengine.org/article/gsoc-2…
Godot leadership is toxic: autocratic, manipulative, intimidating and discriminatory. You can look up toxic leadership triangle:

A charismatic leader is the first sign which identifies Godot as a cult. Even the project manager calls him "the prophet of Godot".

The leader of Godot once said to me that he doesn't like the dictatorship model in Godot. But that doesn't stop him being the benevolent dictator for life in the terms of #OpenSource.

If you ever talk anything bad about Godot, your comments will be frowned upon, down-voted, and even removed, which is typical to Godot community. So this constitutes ideological purity, which is another sign of a cult.

Godot leadership is very active recruiting new users and contributors to work on the engine. They are so obsessed with this that they neglect the development process of Godot as a software, like fixing bugs, and they fixate on fund raising as well.

This is why I ask Godot donors and sponsors to re-evaluate their decision that currently give money to Godot leadership. They don't spend the funds wisely, and the direction of the project totally depends on who gives money.

The fund raising is problematic because Godot has no development philosophy, making it highly unstable to use for anything worthwhile.

Godot is often praised for extremely welcoming community. But this is what describes cult organizations! They will be so welcoming to newcomers that you'd never imagine, expect or doubt that they may abuse and exploit contributors.

But then again, you can be banned for arbitrary reasons in Godot:

Godot uses chat platforms such as Discord as a place to welcome newcomers. But then the community conduct rules are littered with mental health advices and restrictions of thought expressions, which goes along with BITE model:

Godot leadership never apologizes, and when they do, it's done in manipulation purposes to eliminate doubts. It's only about complying with the rules, and if you break those rules, it's unlikely that you'll be able to return:

Godot will allow unlimited modifications of their logo and image, so that they can spread the word of Godot further. In fact, the community created a childish character that makes you feel safe and evoke positive emotions, which is another sign of a cult.

Because cult indoctrination is more likely with organizations which are run on voluntary basis, the followers of Godot often advertise the engine on various forums outside of Godot to get even more followers.

Oftentimes, I stumble upon people who think that there's something wrong with me by saying that Godot is a cult. This is why I had to create a clip to instantly show them who they are in the mirror. 🙂

The Godot community came up with a term "Godotitis", a case of Godot addiction. They constantly joke about this, but this is actually quite serious!

But they don't use jokes for self-reflection, but as a defense mechanism. If you joke about something, it ceases to be serious, and that's what Godot leader would typically do:

Having said that, I've learnt a lot about cults in general. Now I'm able to see other opportunities:

People say that what I do is done out of anger and vengeance, and because of that, they spread slander against me (either intentionally or out of herd mentality). But I'd just like to raise awareness of this issue.

For example, see this thread of things I've stumbled upon. They associate the image of Godot to literally everything. Like, everything, even politics. And that's just a tip of the iceberg, apparently.

The pull request time cost of @godotengine repository is ridiculous: there exist PRs that only got merged 3 years later. This is a completely irresponsible way to manage a community-driven #OpenSource project, which Godot alleges to be. #GodotEngine #CancelGodotEngine Image
Data from: ossinsight.io/analyze/godote…

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More from @Xrayez

Xrayez 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Jun 24
@godotengine: A Definitive Guide on How to Become an Excellent #GodotEngine Developer Image
The first thing that you'd need to do is to learn @godotengine, of course. Take some time to learn GDScript, create prototypes, funny projects, and generally experiment with the engine. It should only take you like 2-4 weeks to master the basics of game development with Godot.
Join Godot community channels. I recommend joining Godot's Discord server first. Introduce yourself there. You'll quickly get bombarded with love from Godot moderators and other users there. Tell them that you're new to Godot and say that it's awesome!
Read 31 tweets
Xrayez 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Jun 22
Godot is NOT community-driven. Let me explain why.

#GodotEngine #CancelGodotEngine
There exist many definitions of community-led approaches. Because Godot attracts people from all around the world, it's extremely important to be explicit about this.
The lead developer of Godot, Juan (@reduzio), says that he always encourages public technical discussions.
Read 33 tweets

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