You can't take the sky from me.
Like the sight of a hundreds of spaceships fleeing Earth at the beginning of the classic 2000 animated science fiction film Titan A.E., developers have begun leaving X (formerly Twitter) en masse following two years of ownership under Elon Musk. But while in that seminal film, the fleeing human race was was scattered throughout the stars, most developers exiting X have found a new home on text-based social media platform Bluesky.
Though some began making the jump as early as 2022, increasingly outlandish decisions by X owner Elon Musk have sent waves and waves of users to the competing platform. For many, Musk's support of US president-elect Donald Trump in the 2024 election was the last straw.
Bluesky seems to be pulling ahead in the "Twitter replacement" wars ahead of platforms like Mastodon and Threads, largely because it recreates the functionality of Twitter pre-Musk takeover. Its main differentiators are the ability for users to build their own Bluesky servers if they so desire, and a suite of moderation tools that make it easier for users to ward off toxic behavior. For instance, if you block someone on Bluesky, you block them in real life both parties are unable to view each other's posts, and any posts from the blocked user interacting with the blocker are rendered invisible.
There are also "Starter Packs," user-created recommendation groups of accounts that let users easily find accounts they might want to follow. Developer Linsey Raymaekers was so enthusiastic about this feature she made a public Notion page documenting high-profile game developer Starter Packs for developers across different disciplines and regions. Elsewhere, developer "Trezy" (last name withheld) has cooked up a game developer labeler for folks to add a badge with their profession to their profile.
But are there other reasons for making the jump? Is the platform restoring an old sense of community or ability to get the word out about your game? We checked in with game developers on the platform to get their feedback—and see if it's truly a network developers can rely on.
Multiple developers we spoke with agreed—even beyond disagreeing with how Musk ran the site, Twitter just wasn't giving them what they needed anymore.
Veelpoot creative director and founder (and former senior narrative designer on Marvel's Avengers and other games) Keano Raubun told Game Developer he used to have "high engagement and growth" on the platform before Musk took over. "From a game marketing perspective, it just made sense to look for alternatives," he said. "Also I'm too old for TikTok."
While some users on the site formerly known as Twitter were seeing less engagement, others were making more—off of anger and toxicity. Game designer Monica Fan said they were one of many developers from a marginalized background who saw extreme posts spread further and further, and they started looking for an exit. "The hate is different when it's not [driven] by personal opinion, but rather as a way to make money," they said.
Almost everyone who responded to us expressed relief at being so removed from hateful posts and users that had dominated X since 2022 (and were often elevated by Musk, sometimes directing harassment toward developers). Plenty of developers faced abuse on the basis of their race, gender, or sexuality. Brass Lion Entertainment design director Osama Dorias told us that among other issues, the tolerance for racism and sexism is what sent him looking for alternative platforms.
X's policy of training the generative AI LLM "Grok" off of X posts also sent some users away. Bluesky has explicitly stated it won't train any AI tools off of what users post ("knowing my stupid posts would be used to help kill the earth directly was too much," quipped technical producer Shayna Moon).
Several developers we spoke with said they appreciated a "shift in tone" they've seen on Bluesky—not just from a lower population of rage-baiting accounts, but also a more relaxed sense of posting from their peers. Kitfox Games founder Tanya Short said she assumes it "won't last" if the population keeps growing, but she nodded to the platform's butterfly logo and said the site's operators seem to be interested in promoting "easy-going vibes."
Image via Bluesky.
Nina Freeman—an indie developer pulling double duty on Dontnod's Lost Records: Bloom and Rage said she initially made an account just to grab the handle, aware that she would need some social media to market her games. "Since I don't typically work with a publisher, I have to do all my own marketing. So maintaining some social media presence is important." She said her main focus is on Twitch, but moving to Bluesky helped her "reconnect" with fellow developers after a long break from social media. "It's fun to see more and more familiar names popping up in this new space."
For some folks, it's a fresh start. The increasingly harsh environment on Twitter (which existed before Musk's takeover) sent some developers away from the platform, including Dave Kosak, former World of Warcraft narrative and quest lead who struggled with online harassment after the California lawsuit against Activision Blizzard. He said Bluesky's "nuclear block" tool has helped him feel reconnecting with the game development community. With "block lists" also built into the platform as feeds that can be subscribed too, it makes it easier to identify larger groups of users you may not want to interact with.
The business case is building too. Aster Wright pinged us to let us know indie developer/publisher Finji is setting up social account for games on the platform, because it's already seeing growth and engagement and connecting with players. Starter packs and custom feeds are also helping them find a non-professional audience and be found by others. Polygon Treehouse creative director Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou seconded this, saying he's already seeing better engagement from posts on Bluesky about the studio's upcoming game Mythwrecked than on other platforms. Riot Games social media manager Eric Aaberg said he's "testing the waters" for seeing if Valorant's esports fandom will gather in the platform.
Plane Toast creative director Émi Lefèvre said her team set up a "brand account" relatively early because the platform was quickly becoming a "legitimate" place to share projects. "For now, I'd say it's a great platform to share early development and get early feedback from kind people," she said.
Is the lack of an "algorithm" that recommends posts to your main feed a good or a bad thing? The answers were mostly positive—custom feeds let developers aggregate who they want to see more easily, and not trying to "game" the algorithm shifts how people post. Some raised the point that no algorithm means it's harder to have your game passively recommended to other users, which will affect the platform's viability as a tool for talking to players.
Indie developer Robert Yang pointed out that so far, Bluesky isn't suppressing visibility on links off the platform, making it more likely his followers will see it when he links to his work. "Even when there were only like 5 people on Bluesky, that was already 5 more people than Twitter would let me reach," he said.
Some developers like Neha Patel were late arrivals because they felt they needed to focus on other platforms like X to have any shot at a career. Fewer resources in the industry for marginalized developers meant she and others didn't have the privilege to withdraw from a major platform for networking and marketing her work.
Leaving was going to have a high cost, so seeing a "fun" audience helped soften the blow for her. She said it's the most fun she's ever had on a social media account.
Some folks we've spoken with—especially those who saw Bluesky in its earlier, rougher days—voiced some caution at viewing the platform as a panacea to X's hostility. Earlier in its lifetime, the site struggled with moderation and seemed to signal it wanted users to moderate their own communities. That changed after Black users reported an uptick in hostility, with one high-profile incident being an account with a slur in its name that seemed to slip by the automated moderation tools.
Katherine Cross (who occasionally contributes to Game Developer) closely analyzed the state of Bluesky and warned in a 2023 Wired column that its professed moderation strategy might put a ceiling on organic connections between communities. "If Bluesky lives up to its promises, the various and sundry right-wing 'culture warriors' and other crypto-fascists might find themselves behind a permanent block that cannot be undone by corporate chicanery," she wrote. "But those same mechanisms will also, of necessity, put up barriers between diverse communities...making it impossible to recreate Twitter’s serendipity."
Ivy Road animation lead "Aura" (a longtime Twitter user whose posts regularly exploded in virality) pointed out that what developers want out of Bluesky—what she described as the vibe of "Twitter circa 2019"—could lead to X's flaws being born again. "2019 Twitter was already in a place where I had to watch I said very carefully, and that's very true of Bluesky as well. This is the only site where random things I say consistently get picked up by the media, and it means I have to be very cautious that even casual comments might become news."
Image via Bluesky.
Indeed, Twitter's network effect and the regular instance of tweets blowing up and driving "dunk-quoting" is a phenomenon that Bluesky sometimes enables. Tools limiting who can quote your posts help, but the network effect Aura is referring to is created by the nature of the site. Many of these safety tools, however, only came to be after users like political commentator Jamelle Bouie briefly decamped from Bluesky, tired of being swarmed by users ready to fight over every kind of post.
There's also a question of what developers will do if their core communities outside of the Western game development industry still live on other platforms. Fan said they're still maintaining a presence on X because Asian game developers haven't begun to make the jump, and indie Shawn Alexander Allen explained he wouldn't be permanently setting up camp as long as the indie/underground rap community is still a thing.
Then there's the general frustration that developers need to be on platforms like Bluesky in the first place. "We were taught in school that if we ever want to get a job in the industry we need to be 'Twitter famous,' Fan said.
Freeman agreed, saying "I don't like that it feels almost essential to work with a publisher or a bigger platform to get the visibility you need...even within just the indie space, never mind the mainstream."
BlueSky's AT protocol may mean the communication method itself isn't controlled by one company, but the easy-to-use app is, and that may leave it vulnerable to the same kind of takeover that befell X, as Lefèvre pointed out. "I still have a bitter feeling about it as this is still a centralized platform owned by a corporation and we'll never be safe from someone taking over," she said. "I wish people would give Mastodon a try but right now it's still lagging behind unfortunately!"
Star Wars: The Old Republic narrative director Ashley Ruhl said she hopes Bluesky can be a place where indie and solo developers can be "elevated," praising the "Starter Pack" system with helping her broaden the kinds of developers she connects with. System Era design director Liz England echoed this sentiment, saying she hopes the platform can revitalize one of Twitter's best strengths, erasing walls between new and aspiring developers.
Developers said to help market games on the platform, they still need better media uploading tools and access to back-end analytics. The only gifs you can post right now are ones that exist in Tenor, and the odds of a high-quality gif of your game going viral aren't very high at the moment.
A key metric to watch out for will be if Bluesky attracts sports fans, as community manager Casey Lucas pointed out. "The demolition of chronological feeds has frustrated sports fans a lot. People like to live-tweet along with a game, interact about games/tournaments using hashtags, build communities of fellow fans, especially if they live outside the geographic area where their favorite team or sport is located," she explained. "I suspected Twitter was on the outs for good when the combination of algorithmic feed and political force-feeding got so bad it started to annoy hockey and football fans."
Across all the followers who wrote into us though, there was a universal theme: everyone wants Bluesky to be a safer, calmer, and more encouraging space for their community. Everyone seems tired of the confrontational type of posting that took place on X, which made directing harassment at other users feel like a fun game.
For now, there's at least a brief moment of joy of having an online space that doesn't cater to white supremacists and conspiracy theorists. It will take careful work by Bluesky management—and a concerted effort by users—to keep it that way.
Update 11/18: This story has been updated to include mention of Trezy's game developer labeler.
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