Eleven years ago, I found myself in a place where I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew it had something to do with creativity and games. Not finding an opportunity to do that with any jobs available to me, I set about trying to do it myself. To that end, I brought to bear my experiences in manufacturing, proofreading, game design, marketing, and logistics to build the cooperative that came to be known as the Indie Game Alliance. To date, IGA has helped nearly two thousand designers and publishers and touched every continent on Earth. We've been involved in more than a quarter billion dollars' worth of successful crowdfunding campaigns. We've recruited a team of more than a thousand volunteers across the world, coalescing around common cause - a love of gaming. I am so, so proud of what we've done as a team and as a community. IGA has forged countless friendships for me that will last for the rest of my days.

Over the last few years, both my physical and mental health have been slowly deteriorating. It started to show itself in my work - a missed meeting there, an email that took too long to answer there, shipping of Minion rewards starting to take weeks instead of hours. IGA members that routinely sang our praises started to express concern and frustration. My work ethic hadn't suffered, just my capability to get up and do the work. I tried doctor after doctor, taking vacations, bringing on such volunteer help as I could find, everything I could think of to alleviate the pressure, but eleven years of 18/7 work have taken their toll. I've had no time to spend with my wife, engage in any of my other hobbies, or even sit down to play a game in ages, and more and more of my time has been taken up with dealing with my growing health concerns.

Broken-hearted though I am to admit it, I can no longer do this at the level I used to - the level of excellence people have come to expect from IGA. I'm 45 years old, my body and my mind are held together with duct tape, and I just can't load U-hauls full of thousands of pounds of cardboard in 110 degree heat like I did when I was younger. At conventions, people would invite me to go play games with them after the vendor hall closed, and it would be all I could do to crawl to an Uber and lick my wounds. I keep telling myself, "tomorrow, I'm going to put the pain and the anxiety and everything out of my mind, power through it, and get everything done." For the better part of 18 months, I've been failing a little at a time, waiting for a mythical tomorrow that never came.

Beyond that, though, I've spent most of my adult life helping strangers create their dreams, and neglecting my own. It's time for that to change.

I write today to announce, with a proud, grateful, and heavy heart, that I have made the decision to suspend operations of the Indie Game Alliance. I'm not looking to sell it or hand it off to another entity; it's simply too big and too complex to try and hand off, and the reality is, after slowly losing my capability to stay on top of it for a year and a half, I'd feel bad asking somebody to come clean up my mess. Beyond that, whoever took it over would need a ton of support from me, and if I were in a position to reliably provide it, I probably wouldn't be making this announcement in the first place.

IGA has been an enormous success in its own right; never financially, but its legacy will live on in the thousands of games that were produced under our collective banner. I take solace in the fact that IGA never failed - we proved together beyond the shadow of a doubt that this insane dream could be done. Rather, I am retiring, to focus on my health and allow myself to live my life for the first time in more than a decade.

I'm likely not going to totally disappear from the tabletop scene. I'm going to take some time to lick my wounds, process all of this, and hopefully turn the corner with my health. You'll likely see me pop up here and again as a developer. Who knows, maybe even as a designer! Until then, I'm going to ride into the sunset with my head held high, knowing that eleven years and three months ago, people told me this couldn't be done, and the only thing keeping the ship from sailing full speed through year 12 is the fact that its captain is exhausted.

Trying to thank everyone by name who deserves it would make this letter something like 70 pages, so I'm just going to say: to every single person who ever volunteered, worked a con with us, demoed a game, trusted us with your creative endeavors, helped a fellow member who was technically a competitor, contributed art or other support to a member game, or offered a discount to a member in need - thank you. You've proven that community and a sense of common good still exists in the world, and having led that mission for the last decade-plus has been one of the great honors of my life. Victoria and I extend each of you our very best wishes and deepest gratitude.

If you have any questions regarding the shutdown, I can still be reached at mholden@indiegamealliance.com.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for doing the impossible with us.

Matt and Victoria Holden