Katie Payn

@katiepayn.com

Creative Lead and Project Manager for The Aether Project 1997 bitch Lesbian she/her

Happy to report, despite some login issues and annoyances, FFXIV works great on Switch 2! Excited to play more casually in the sort of way the Switch usually encourages me to do in other games. Maybe I'll finish Endwalker and catch up with Dawntrail soon!

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Hello everyone! Many of you likely saw this image recently with the Apple TV+ 'Neuromancer' promotion. Some know, others don't, but this artwork is mine, created alongside actor & post-production artist Milton Menezes, as a personal project and a homage to the original Neuromancer romance

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I have spent half my actual life working on this project and now a decade running it as its Team Lead, we have now celebrated 15 years since the original Aether mod released back in July of 2011. An awesome milestone!

The Aether@aether-mod.net · 2w ago

Today, July 22nd 2026, marks 15 years since the release of the original Aether mod Please enjoy this special anniversary artwork and message written by the Aether Team Lead, Katie Payn, to commemorate this amazing milestone

Anniversary artwork featuring a Glowstone Aether Portal in the shape of the number 15 in front of landscape images of various Aether Projects. Text below the Glowstone Portal image reads "15 years exploring the skies together, Thank you all for making The Aether a special place for us all"

Today, July 22nd 2026, marks 15 years since the release of the original Aether mod Please enjoy this special anniversary artwork and message written by the Aether Team Lead, Katie Payn, to commemorate this amazing milestone

Anniversary artwork featuring a Glowstone Aether Portal in the shape of the number 15 in front of landscape images of various Aether Projects. Text below the Glowstone Portal image reads "15 years exploring the skies together, Thank you all for making The Aether a special place for us all"Today, July 22nd 2026, marks 15 years since the release of the original Aether Mod for Minecraft by our team's founders. Since then our team has expanded and our roster has rotated over time. Talented engineers, artists, musicians, community managers, and designers have joined the team, developed their skills and talents, and left to work on bigger and better projects and teams including Mojang, Hypixel Studios, Skybound Entertainment, and more. But our team's core philosophy of delivering awe-inspiring experiences in breathtaking worlds has remained the same. 

10 years ago I became the steward of this project as its Team Lead. Since then, we have fleshed out The Aether's world, remastered the original mod and brought it back into the mainstream of Minecraft modding, revived and enriched the project's long-awaited sequel The Aether II, launched an amazing collaboration with the Origin Realms server, launched official merchandise with Makeship, and most recently finally released an official version of The Aether on the Minecraft Marketplace with Aether Legends.

This all represents an absolute resurgence in The Aether Project, with now over 120 million downloads on Curseforge, over 2000 Makeship plushes sold, and thousands of new fans brought in by our various collaborations and new releases. The project is now in the healthiest state it has ever seen since its inception, and we are incredibly excited to continue evolving this world via updates to our existing projects and incubating new projects going forward. So please look forward to new content and project announcements over the next few years.

We absolutely could not have achieved any of this without all of you, so shout out to our Patrons, people who put aside their hard-earned money long term to help keep our project afloat over the last decade, and shout out to all of you who have continued to play, enjoy, and talk about The Aether Project over the years. 

I also want to shout out a few important people wh…

Im becoming such a little ball of stress about money and long term business planning and short term sales goals and my own project development and all that stuff I am not having a super great time rn If this week goes well though I will be so fucking happy holy shit

id Software and Obsidian being gutted down to the label is a truly heartbreaking torching of some of the most important studios in gaming as both an industry and an art form. There's a lot of opining and gnashing of teeth that can be done about it, but it just sucks.

Microsoft engineered this so that it looked the least bad optically while at the same time still committing a slaughter, all so that Satya Nadella can still dick around with more useless AI horseshit. Fuck him and fuck Microsoft.

Really feel for those impacted by the news coming out of Xbox/Microsoft today. I hope everyone manages to land on their feet. Utterly disgraceful mishandling of both people's lives and the incredible work they do in our industry. Dreadful.

Sony killing physical games will have more ripple effect than we first envision. It will hurt retailers. It will damage any affiliate marketing. This will hurt media and creators depending on affiliate income like us. Which means less exposure for games. Which will hurt sales.

Love this version of team Star Fox! Second run and I went for the hard route and got the proper ending! Aquas was super close and Area 6 was a huge surprise jump in difficulty but otherwise it went really well. Fantastic game!!

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Star Fox is really good, surprised to see how few reviews mention quite how expanded the story content of the game is. Not only are there brand new cutscenes between every single mission, changing depending on what mission route you've taken, but there is a HUGE lore log through the holoviewer too!

Steam Machine being above $1000 base price is a real shame. It makes sense in context, without going deep into the used market you cant really make a small form factor PC of similar spec for the same price. Valve has obviously kept the price down as low as they can. But it is simply too high. Sad

If you think Keir Starmer is a 'decent' person, you need to speak to the many, many minorities his government has targeted mercilessly. You can't speak to all of them, however, because many of them are dead because of choices Keir Starmer's government made

Keir Starmer, one of the most outwardly anti-trans Prime Ministers in recent history, has announced his resignation. Good riddance, but also utterly embarrassing that we cannot have a leader that can stick to the job without walking backwards into scandal and incompetent policy crafting. Nonsense.

So Im not a big company CEO, my business sense Im sure is absolutely worthless. But I cannot for the life of me understand what on earth Microsoft is doing with Xbox/gaming atm. It seems like they fundamentally do not understand the business they're in and have absolutely conflicting strategies.

The Aether II Alpha 4 is here! This update introduces the Shifting Glass loot item for dodging and dashing, The Aerbunny Bell companion item, as well as the aquatic Prismallard mob! You can also find improved biome visuals and new structure generation alongside many bug fixes and improvements!

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