And just a final general footnote that relying on unpaid volunteer labour is not always necessarily 'unethical'. What's unethical is *making a profit* from volunteer or unpaid labour. It is okay for a community to invest itself in the work of maintaining itself as a community!
Ultimately, I hope Freeplay finds a way to return to and persist in its more ragtag low budget from, relying on the community that in turn gets so much from it to sustain it. Or people start new ragtag events in new dojos without a budget to make the new CEOS of the game industry feel uncomfortable.
one more thing about freeplay, and an issue that's been on my mind for a while (alt text available):
Freeplay 2025 was one of the events I was able to convince myself to go to last year, and it reminded why I love games so fucking much. It's so crucial to have events like Freeplay that highlight how games aren't disposable.