now before anyone gets misled by some of the reddit threads gamesradar linked to, some quotes from the relevant reddit thread:

I worked extensively on most of her mods. In the period immediately following the Daegon 2.0 controversy, I tracked down several recurring trolls (people here might remember them as cycling through Reddit usernames like "SeranasStankPussy" and other such things) as originating from literal Kiwifarms.

She made a female follower mod called Daegon. It was a suggestive follower with sexy voice and looks, and "bratty princess" personality.

There was an idea about developing romance option for the follower. The fans were so excited about it. However she ended up adding a bodyguard character as Daegon's romantic partner instead of opening the options to player. Daegon also had a major backstory rewrite, which was deemed as straying too far from TES lore. Fans felt betrayed. The backlash was so fervently hostile that anything the author posted always received downvotes and she was demeaned/harassed for posting anything (something like "you dare to show your face here?"), even when it's not related to Daegon.

At the time, she removed the old version and people leaked her discord server chat, which was very hostile and demeaning to the people complaining.

Basically: the mod author developed and people on her discord developed a para-social relationship and it went as expected. You can search this sub for that whole thing

There's more details on her discord (as usual):

my photos get passed around on skyrim servers, im called a slut and whore, and for what?

gamesradar linked to a few of the threads that got overwhelmed with trolls, who amplified how she blocked users (some of which inappropriately) from her mod pages and claimed she encouraged her fans to doxx people based on a single out-of-context screenshot of a random discord fan.

Reading the article, this is a typical case of burnout. It's happening to every artist, content creator, modder, foss developer, etc. On the long term we all have to find a balance or we won't last long. And tbh, just learn to ignore the trolls and focus on the positive things and your passion or they will win. You can't take them seriously. It seems the person in the article has already found herself another passion project and could throw away the suffocating chains of responsibilty and something she did not enjoy anymore and move on. I think instances like these really show us we are all just humans and we should appreciate the things we are given.

This broad dynamic isn't new and it isn't unique either to gaming or to men. Every single creative volunteer community on the net is filled with assholes and drama llamas, of any and all genders. It's just the nature of the thing. You see the same things over and over with game modding, cracking, romhacking, emulation, manga scanlation, anime fansubbing, vocaloid production, mmd modeling, fanfic, fanart, and so on and on.

People often (generally?) are willing to invest the time and energy into whatever it is that they're going to post online at least in large part because they crave the attention they hope it will bring, and specifically, they want to be lauded for their talent and skill.

And that often runs up against the fact that an awful lot of the responses they're going to get are going to come from self-absorbed and entitled assholes bitching because they don't like whatever it is that they're getting for free, and think they have to be accommodated.

And very often, the response from the creator, unsurprisingly really, is to effectively (or even literally) say, "Fine then - fuck you all. I'm done."

And 'round and 'round it goes, and has from the start, and likely will never stop. It's just an unfortunate but pretty much inevitable clash between a personality type that's likely to create and share something online for free and a personality type that's likely to comment on something somebody else created and shared with them for free.

"gamers as a whole"

leave me out of this i didnt do anything.

Man, gaming communities are so fucking toxic.

Thousands of hours, months of hard work. For about 300 bucks and a bunch of incels doxxing and harassing her.

I cannot fathom why she left.

I think gaming is too mainstream like television/movie viewers to lump it into some type of niche group/activity these days. Especially with the increased communication and connectivity that the internet provides that brings all sorts of wanted and unwanted people together.

I'm someone who enjoys gaming, and when I play games like The Finals these days I disable chat/voice because most people are assholes. Game previously didn't have chat and enabling that turned it from what felt like a wholesome community because I wasn't exposed to their thoughts to it breaking the illusion when they were able to express themselves.

I think this is more a more broad societal issue and a worrying one of being shown what people truly think. Even a minority is a huge amount when the population is billions, so a lot of damage can be done. Games is just another avenue they choose to be toxic in along side other vehicles provided to communicate their thoughts.

i’m sorry that you have to deal with the outfall of this, OP. gamers are notoriously the most overly sensitive group to generalize, even when they’re meant to think “i recognize that this is pointing out bad apples in my community”. instead, they immediately start defending themselves as if you specifically named them

the sane response is to go “wow that is awful. the gaming community does indeed contain some terrible people, i am glad to be one of the good ones and will distance myself from this behavior”

the boob jiggle physics are genuinely ridiculous on this mod, i just watched the preview. gamers are brain broken