Dan Dixon, the <i>sole</i> author of Universe Sandbox -- he spent three unpaid years writing it alone -- and the lead developer of its rewrite (and founder of Giant Army, which employs a few developers, an astronomer, and even a climatologist), is one of the most honest, forthright people in gaming. Seriously, HN would love his story if you bothered to look. They&#x27;re not a hypergrowth startup and have traditionally eschewed many forms of marketing. I realize the concept of an aboveboard, mostly marketing-free gaming studio without a growth team or investors or a bottom line and funded entirely by sales of an unexpected hit is foreign on Hacker News, but believe it or not, there is reality outside this valley. Their press kit is a DIY template, for crying out loud; you really, honestly think they&#x27;re astroturfing a non-gaming Web site like <i>Hacker News</i>?<p>Universe Simulator is impressive software that does mostly arbitrary N-body at acceptable performance on a workstation (itself a technical feat), it was written by a single individual (again, a feat), and more than that, it&#x27;s an educational tool disguised as a game which broke into multiple markets unexpectedly. Your comment is hilariously out of place to anyone who remotely follows the gaming world at all. I&#x27;ve always viewed Dan Dixon as a great bootstrapping success story and an example of following through on an idea to the end, when many would have given up long before the success he has found.<p>I suppose I shouldn&#x27;t be surprised that people are willing to make accusations (sorry, &quot;questions&quot; about a financial relationship to spam a message board, which smell <i>a lot like</i> accusations despite your claim to the contrary) about people and organizations they&#x27;ve never heard of based upon a significant number of bad actors in the world, but sometimes a little research wouldn&#x27;t hurt. There are far too many column inches devoted to these &quot;questions,&quot; and far too many people upvoting you, so the irony of your taking on perceived astroturfing is that you&#x27;ve successfully and completely derailed the thread.