Hey, so I've been reading through old thread pages around the time of the release of the Viper and Corvette to make sure I have all of the reported physics issues ironed out for the updates I'm finishing right now... found the pages with all of your comments in February and I'd like to thank all of you for the kind words and well-wishes.
On the subject of this:
For the record, I didn't leave because of anything anyone said to me about any of my own work. (Although the guy who reviewed the Lola and smugly docked it a star because of a UI badge issue that was already listed as 'fixed for next update' came awfully close.) I left because of the giant fight over the RallyLegends Lancia, and the pervasive attitude on display there that modders who ask for or reward users for donation support or (gasp) offer paymods are somehow abusing the community.
It was never about
me. I've never once asked for pay or even for donations. I never even put up a paypal link for them in the first place - despite sinking more than 5000+ hours into developing my skills and researching/creating my cars... not to mention the ~$500 I've spent out of my own pocket on books, models, and subscriptions to services that had data I needed for this project or that.
It occurred to me at a certain point that in my idealism about working for free, for the enrichment of the community I was, in fact, contributing to its corruption by reinforcing and justifying certain users' sense of entitlement regarding their right to get professional-quality content for free. The only thing that made sense was to stop feeding into that. (And frankly, I needed the break anyway... see: 5000+ hours.)
At any rate, 9 months off has done me good. I doubt I'll ever get as stuck-in as I was before, but I'm back now and I'm still working on cars as I have been the entire time. There's lots of unreleased stuff on my hard drive that could use some models, and if I can arrange to make the 3d work happen I will share any or all of it. For free. As always.
The overwhelming majority of you are kind, appreciative people and there's plenty of life left in AC. I'd love to bring you some more cars.