Help Save the RE:BIND Crew

We're the staff of Rebind.io, an ad-free, readership-supported arthouse indie game culture site that has been publishing analysis and critique, Monday through Friday, every week since the start of 2019, and we're incredibly grateful for the readership and connections we've been able to cultivate.

For those familiar with our work, you've as much as told us that we serve a much-needed role in the ecosystem.

For those unfamiliar, we're three trans women and a cis man, two of whom are immigrants, and we have unfortunately found ourselves without a home due to a severe infestation of what we believe is black mold. At the least, the infestation serves to explain why two of us have had to make multiple visits to the emergency room and outpatient clinics, as well as the other two suffering from similar symptoms.

(Medea awaiting diagnosis in the local ER.)

It's clear to us that we need to relocate for our health and safety; meanwhile, our car has been experiencing engine issues, and until it's repaired, it's a roll of the dice whether it'll break down on the road. Mounting medical costs, car repair, and the other costs involved with relocation add up to more than our current income streams can cover.

It's a struggle to operate a small business even under ideal circumstances, especially when you're queer and not originally from the US. It's even more challenging when you're working with a small budget and low income, and trying to push the envelope of an industry's media coverage, tilting it in favor of the unheard, small, and underrepresented developers from all walks of life. This year, we were preparing to launch a video interview series using footage we'd spent the past six months recording, but during production, the financial tightrope we'd been walking in pursuit of our ambitions has nearly given out from under us.

(One of many affected areas.)

We volunteer locally, mentor both people within the LGBTQ+ and developer communities, and are integral members of local business that are redefining how the general public engages with video games. We want to keep providing outstanding advocacy to the community, and we also want to stay alive and healthy, and ensure that sustainability is more than a distant dream.

In the same motion as exiting our current arrangement, the additional cost of relocating to the Seattle area is comparatively minuscule. It makes very little sense to stay where we are; the work we do in our current city can be done from afar, and being where we've made a majority of our connections allows us far more opportunities to sustain day jobs that employ our skillsets and ensure stability for the site and ourselves.

We've run Rebind out of pocket, at our expense, fitting in what labor we could alongside our day gigs. Some of us are between development contracts, and have already quickly burned through what reserves we had gained from those.

We need your help, as without it, realistically, there can be no Rebind, and we will remain in a position of instability for the foreseeable future, trying to claw our way out from under these circumstances.

We're asking for a sum to cover costs including but not limited to:
- Resolving our current housing situation
- Taking care of the initial deposit and costs associated with starting a new lease
- Addressing present car maintenance costs so we can more effectively support ourselves and the site
- Paying medical bills
- Replacing the amount of property lost in the past month (kitchenware, clothing, furniture, bedding, and more have been contaminated)
- Relocating the remainder of our possessions, which *really* needs to be sorted by the 25th at the latest

(Our bedding and a lot of our clothing trashbagged and ready to be tossed.)

(Mattresses that had what we believe to be mold growing beneath them.)

We have a Patreon where our extremely generous userbase supports us, but it is still in the early stages of growth. For those of you who have contributed there, thank you! We really appreciate it, and ask only that you spread this funding campaign where you can to ensure we can properly and meaningfully leverage that sustainable contribution to the site's operation. If we can get over this hurdle, it will enable us to grow Rebind's operation into something invaluable to the community for years to come.