I think I remember reading that when the GJ bans rolled out. I recall the week before it came out. I was working on updating my No Porn Allowed and happened to be browsing GJ's site again. Looking around, I just got a sense their priorities had shifted. A week later I got that same email everyone else did. I was fucking crushed, ngl. I found a lot of inspiration on GameJolt. Much of it providing the motivation to take on my own weird, queer, and horny projects.
Also, I agree so much with that "I can't give up now". Shit has only gotten more scary and cruel. Another person in the comments mentioned how LLM generated art has people giving up in mass. I remember how hard my time as an artist was. Dealing with self-doubt, nasty comment, occasional harassment. It just makes me want to lift others up more than ever. I refuse to let the cruelty of the world stop me from creating art.
And, because organizing my thoughts well is hard, people are terrible at considering the strife of artist. Too many people be looking at us like vending machines. Then, you have lots of people the forget their struggles, or worse, use their strife to justify putting other down. This is especially common within game development (and software at large). "I struggled learning <NEBULOUS UNINTUITIVE TOOL> thus you must". Felienne Hermans has a great talk covering this, and I think it relates back to how gamers use the terms "asset flip" and "shovel-ware" to deride games. "Hard Is Good. Anything That Is Easy Is Bad. Making Hard Stuff Easy is Evil".
There is just so much more I could discuss. And, I'm glad you put this essay out. I've recently been playing through 50 Short Games. And, it's got me thinking about what game making means to me again.