FTW / Sax Life Update

JULY 1ST, 2025

Hello Wipers,

It has been QUITE A WHILE since I gave a ForcedToWipe and/or a Life update so I figured there’s no better time than right before a new expansion drops!

Some of you guys already know this information, others of you may not be as in tune; so I wanted to put this together to get us all on the same page! I’ll break this up into 2 sections, “Sax Life Update”, and then an update on the “State of the ForcedToWipe Discord”.

Starting today, I have stepped away from my full-time job to focus on my family and to work for myself and continue making content (Destiny and hopefully otherwise in the future). There are a multitude of reasons for this change (I promise this is not because I think I’ve “made it” lol)

Let’s start first by talking about the Personal Life Updates, starting with the “Family Stuff”

Late in 2024, my Dad was diagnosed with fairly aggresive Liver Disease and we have been pursuing a transplant for him. That has been extremely taxing physically, emotionally and the like on my Parents, my Sister, Heather, and myself as we navigate the challenges that come with this diagnosis. There is a limited timeline without a more drastic interv

Unfortunately, there is a limited timeline without drastic intervention of this sort. Thankfully, if we are able to successfully navigate the red tape and get him a successful transplant, we have the possibility of quadrupling his life expectancy.

Regardless of what Life has for us, I plan to continue to prioritize time with him and the rest of my family, as I know you all would do as well!

Now let’s talk specifically about the Content Creation

Back in February, when Sundered Doctrine released, Elle and I had a mostly nonsensical idea to create the Lens Director tool. Through sheer stubbornness (mostly on my part) and willpower to create a helpful tool for the broader community; we hit our goal of releasing it before the second Contest Mode weekend and it became a huge hit (relative to anything I had ever produced).

Fun fact, The Lens Director along with other Raid/Dungeon Resources are still used by hundreds of Guardians across the globe on a weekly basis!

Before going to bed the night before contest mode returned, I uploaded a post to Reddit and a screen recording to TikTok and Youtube showing off the tool. When I woke up, the posts had reached nearly 50,000 views across all platforms. This one action gave me the boost and has helped me maintain momentum to begin creating content to share with the wider Destiny community.

For those of you who have interacted with my videos, allowed me to stream/record our runs, provided funny commentary or top tier gameplay so I could share it with the world.. THANK YOU!

And to Heather.. THANK YOU for believing in me and working so hard for the last 7-8 years in Dental School and your Ortho Residency to give me the foundation to make this shift. I promise to work as hard as I’ve always watched you work!

As I continue to refine my content creation “skills” (generous) I want to provide a place for my various communities (TikTok, YouTube, etc) to cross and find people to play with. Also, with the shrinking of the Destiny Community, I feel that it’s more important than ever to bring the playerbase together rather than keeping people isolated into different servers or friend groups.

Now, let’s talk about the Future of FTW!

ForcedToWipe began as a place for close friends to game together and want to stay in touch as life ebbs and flows. And though it started as a close-knit Midwest (USA) based group, I have adored how we’ve grown internationally and been able to develop deep friendships with people we wouldn’t have met otherwise.

Many of you have relized, I have treated ForcedToWipe as if it was my “side business” with no real expectation of ever seeing an actual monetary return since Day 1 of its creation. Even so, the cost of running FTW has progressively grown over the months to the tune of ~$50 each month just to keep everything going between server boosts, website, Minecraft server, etc. No one asked me to do this, but it was something that I wanted to provide as a thank you and in a manner to make FTW the best place for everyone to hang out and play Destiny.

I have also always deeply struggled with the idea of “monetizing” the friend group we have here (if you don’t believe me, you can ask Elle about our conversations on this topic, lol). The creation of the FTW shop was the tiniest dip of the toe into these waters, and to be honest, the margins on everything on the store are razer thin (aside from the aprons since I invested in commissioning the design for that).

FTW as a friend group is NOT GOING ANYWHERE, and will continue to be a place for us to connect and stay in touch with people in the manner that it always has been, however, I will soon be “archiving” the Destiny 2 related chats and leaving all of “The Lounge” for us to continue using. All of the Destiny 2 content will be migrating over to the SaxPlaysGames community Discord server, including scheduled teaching runs, Destiny 2 related events/activities, LFG, etc.

This may not appeal to some of you, and to that point I fully understand and there is no expectation that anyone has to join the SPG server if you’re not looking to play Destiny in the future; but my dream is that those of you who are still planning to play and have been, “in the trenches” learning these raids and dungeons from Holla, Snowy, and I over the past 3 years would help us teach and reach more people as I try to expand how we do things here in FTW to a much broader audience!

With the full separation of D2 gaming and Lifestyle content, I will gain the ability to provide a foundation for continued Content Creation growth, while keeping FTW as a place for us to talk Sports, Movies, Variety Gaming, Food, and general life stuff!

And one final note for clarity, ForcedToWipe will continue to be an exclusive Clan inside of Destiny 2 for anyone who is currently in the clan or close family and friends that may one day decide to play!

If you are not currently in the SaxPlaysGames Community Server, you can use this link to join: https://discord.gg/fJMknr4YWQ

Please let me know if you have any questions about this all, and I’m happy to answer what I can!

- Sax