Let’s start from the main announcement and reason for this post: I am not collaborating with Drop anymore. You’ll still see some of my products on their website, that’s because they are already produced, but they will slowly fade over time. That means that there won’t be any new product designed by me for Drop. So no Dark Speech Tolkien keycaps, no Elven dices, no full brown Retro, no MT2 set designed by me (in contrast to what I announced few hours ago).

Of course it’s hard to stay objective but I’ll try to stick to facts, things that I can prove and have documentation for (emails/chats/whatever).

So what changed since the very “diplomatic” post I wrote 24 hours ago? Everything seemed fine, right?

Few days ago Drop announced the MT2 profile. They never talked about it to me and I am not involved in the process in any way. They have all the rights to do that, but considering the very long relationship we had I would have appreciated a heads up.

After all people know that MT3 = Matt3o and rightfully thought MT2 was my doing. I received dozens of messages from the community asking for details about “my” (not mine!) new creature.

So with one quick swipe Drop used the MT3 success to create a completely unrelated product and by calling it MT2 they are also claiming that the MT moniker is not related to me, it was all part of their business plan.

I contacted them to ask what happened. We talked and Yanbo (my contact at Drop) personally apologized. Great, everything’s fine. The heat of the moment passed and at the end they have their corporate dynamics.

In the same chat they asked me NOT to post about my malcontent about the MT2 naming. At that point there was no ill feeling and I told them that all I wanted was for people to know that I’m not involved in the making of a cherry clone. I wouldn’t have done it even if they asked.

Then we moved on discussing a set I could have done in MT2, it might have been Skull Squadron.

A day passed and they got some heat out of the MT2 announcement on their website and in one of their comments they say:

No mention to me and now they are attributing the name to MiTo.

Now the feeling is that they just wanted to take distance from me and take back control over the naming. They are willingly cancelling my existence.

I asked to stop creating confusion at the very least. I complied with their request of not fomenting drama, but they are free to do what they want.

After talking to them again it was clear that: 1) they have no respect for my person, they are loyal only to themselves; 2) they do not intend to rectify what they said. They went as far as saying (paraphrasing but remember everything is documented):

“why can’t he [Matteo] not post about it or just post he is fine with it and to calm down“

At this point I’m disappointed, but there’s no drama. Since they prove to have no respect of me, I can’t in good conscience keep working with them. I would do it just for the money, there would be no soul in my products and I can’t give you that.

Let me reiterate that it’s not a “bad break up”, our lives and goals changed and we are just doing different things. And you’ll know more about those things soon enough. There are more keycaps coming from another company, spherical top with a great font and a new keyboard with hot-swaps, backlight and all that jazz. So stay tuned!

UPDATE: if you are interested I posted a brief history of the MT3 profile.