If you’re somewhat deep into the RPG Maker community, you should know who Yanfly is, at this point. Yanfly is a household name in the community, being the writer of scripts and plug-ins that’s vastly improved the RPG Maker experience and their footprint can be seen in a lot of RPGs made in the engine. Ever play LISA: The Painful RPG? Liked the combat system of inputting in combos to do moves? That’s all Yanfly, pal.

Yanfly’s hit their stride with their RPG Maker MV plug-ins, creating a lot of general plug-ins along with a few, more niche ones that people real serious about making RPGs will appreciate. Their plug-ins are royalty free and were free in general, so people hoping to go commercial have accessible resources, thanks to Yanfly.

But today, Yanfly announced that they will be retiring from making resources for the community.

So, Yanfly actually announced that they would retire after releasing their 200th plug-in a while ago. However, by sheer coincidence there’s been a bunch of drama surrounding them in the past week that probably contributed to that. So, what’s the deal with that?

A plug-in writer posted an RPG Maker MV plug-in on itch.io that’s accused of plagarizing code from Yanfly. What makes it particularly egregious is that this pack using freely available content is being sold for money, which is kind of a lousy thing to do.

This was not the first time that something like this happened, but this along with some undisclosed reasons led to Yanfly making a decision that’s alienated some of their supporters. From now on, except for a pack full of basic RPG Maker MV plug-ins, people can only get plug-ins by buying packs of them off their itch.io page or by giving $5 through Patreon. And well, a bunch of people got upset about that.

But here’s the thing, though. Yanfly’s basically been doing free work for the community for years and their footprint can be seen in a lot of games. Heck, games that aren’t even RPGs probably use their more general scripts. They’ve had a lot of impact on RPG Maker and I think it’s only fair that they see money from it. Hell, Yanfly’s one of the few people I support on Patreon because I’ve been using their scripts in my stuff for years. So, for people to complain about their new pay wall just comes off as really entitled, especially since they’re keeping their most essential plug-ins free for everyone.

Yanfly’s done a lot for the community and it’s sad to see them go. They were already planning on stopping, but it’s upsetting that they’re leaving on a sour note. I wish the best for them in whatever they’re doing in the future.

Of course, Yanfly’s not the only plug-in writer; they just happen to be the most prolific. Yanfly’s known to also hold up other resource makers in the RPG Maker community (which was how he discovered the plagarism in the first place), like Atelier Irina. So please, if you’re a developer in the RPG Maker community, support people like Yanfly. Don’t just support your local game devs, but also support the people that help them succeed.