On May 16, 2024, the game's creator and lead developer FlashfyreDev announced that he would be resigning just two months after the game's release, citing issues with the game's scope and wanting to focus more on his family and religious faith. The following day, a Twitter user posted a conversation that FlashfyreDev had on Discord, where he admitted that he was "far from pro-[transgender]" due to his "biblical view of the world." The negative response to this from the game's fan community lead to a statement from Lost in Paradise, a moderator on the game's Discord server, who stated that the comments did not reflect the views of the remaining developers while repeatedly denouncing transphobia and other forms of bigotry. The statement also claimed that transphobic remarks that had been left on the server were unintentional due to an overworked moderation team and lack of a disciplined community manager, after a reported incident where a prior community manager banned several mods in a "severe abuse of power".

This statement was criticized by the fan community as users began digging up previous offensive comments made in the server. This included messages from moderators like Lost in Thought who stopped discussions about transgender topics, claiming "there are people that are not comfortable with the subject", as well as multiple instances of slurs and bigoted comments from contributors to the game. The moderators were also accused of deleting pro-transgender messages while leaving transphobic messages unmoderated, citing a server announcement that prohibited discussions "of any kind regarding one's gender, political affiliation or religious beliefs" and that any subsequent discussion on the topics would result in "warnings at best and bans at worst."