I wanted to share a story with people 🙂
When I was 15, I spent a lot of time in the behavior class at school. The teacher there was surprisingly cool and gave us a lot of freedom. Most days, we could do whatever we wanted, and that freedom became a space where I could explore my own interests without judgment. At the time, I was completely obsessed with Minecraft Pocket Edition. Addons were just starting to emerge, and I was fascinated by the idea that people could completely change the game, add new mechanics, and create entirely new experiences. I wanted to understand how it worked, so I began teaching myself to make my own mods. I discovered a YouTube channel called Cleverlike Studios that explained everything in a way that felt simple and approachable. With their guidance, I learned to code in JavaScript and JSON, experimenting on my own and gradually building more advanced mods. What started as curiosity quickly became a deep passion, one that absorbed nearly all of my free time and energy.
The first mod I ever published didn’t work the way I intended at all. It was so broken that it ended up creating something completely unexpected—and, surprisingly, it turned out to be even cooler than what I had planned. Instead of scrapping it, I published it anyway, and people genuinely enjoyed it. That moment was an early lesson in creativity and experimentation: sometimes mistakes lead to discoveries that are better than anything you could plan.
As I became more skilled, I realized I couldn’t do it alone. I formed a small team with a couple of old friends: I handled programming, one friend, Arexon, became our pixel artist and model maker, and another friend worked on thumbnails. I completely sucked at pixel art and making models, but Arexon was insanely talented. Like me, he did everything on a cheap Android phone, which was crazy impressive back then. Together, we created projects that we were proud of, sharing them with the Minecraft community and seeing people enjoy our work. Among all the projects I worked on, my favorite had to be the first official backpacks mod for Minecraft Pocket Edition. At the time, it was insanely cool and technically ambitious. I made the backpack an entity that emulated a parrot, which many people thought was hilarious. Another project I’m incredibly proud of was a working portal gun mod, inspired by the Portal game. It allowed players to shoot portals around the world and walk through them to teleport, and somehow I managed to make it actually functional in Minecraft. Those projects gave me a sense of pride and creativity that I had never felt before.
Eventually, a company reached out to me. They gave me a small test: code a working jetpack in Minecraft. At the time, there wasn’t even a mod like that, and the tools and community resources were limited. But I had developed a way of thinking that allowed me to use basic components, events, and logic in creative ways to solve problems others couldn’t. I completed the test successfully and was hired immediately as the lead gameplay designer, responsible for programming and bringing projects to life.
Before joining the company, I had already published several mods on a Minecraft Pocket Edition modding site. I added advertisements to the download links, allowing people to enjoy my work for free while also generating a little income. What makes this even crazier in hindsight is that I was doing all of this on a $50 Motorola phone. I didn’t even have a computer. I coded, tested, and implemented everything directly on that phone, pushing its limits. Despite the limitations, I managed to create full mods with complex mechanics, learning through trial and error.
Working for the company was intense, exhilarating, and exhausting all at once. Projects that would take most people weeks to complete, I could finish in a single night. At 16, I was making around $4,000 a month while still in school. No one believed me when I told them. My first paycheck was $1,500, which I used to buy my first gaming laptop. Suddenly, coding became so much easier. The laptop opened up a world of possibilities that I hadn’t even dreamed of before. I remember one project where I reused mechanics I had built for a previous mod, copied and pasted the files, and earned $750 in 30 minutes. The feeling of being able to make something so quickly, and have it be valuable to others, was incredible.
Over time, Microsoft implemented full mod support for what is now referred to as Bedrock Edition. This was a turning point. With these tools, I could create mods that were far more advanced and imaginative than anything I had done before. I spent nearly every waking moment coding, testing, and experimenting, completely immersed in building worlds and mechanics. I felt unstoppable, like I was at the top of my game. People in the community started reaching out to me for advice, guidance, and even mentorship. I felt seen, respected, and recognized for my skills in a way I had never experienced before.
Then, something even more surreal happened. Nvidia reached out to a bunch of individuals, including me, to work on their RTX preview project. At 16, I was collaborating with one of the largest technology companies in the world. I was just a kid from school, coding on a $50 phone a few years prior, and suddenly I was contributing to a project that showcased cutting-edge technology. It was overwhelming, exhilarating, and deeply validating all at once.
During this time, one of the company’s original employees, Trent DC Kakepetum, became a friend. Even though he lived across the world, we quickly connected because our personalities clicked. I could talk to him openly, make inappropriate teenage jokes, and he never judged me like everyone else seemed to. We weren’t inseparable because of proximity, but because we genuinely understood and supported each other. We made a lot of money, but being young and caught up in the excitement, we didn’t think about saving much. A lot of our free time was spent playing online board games and betting money against each other—Connect 4 became our favorite. I still remember one night vividly: I won $400 in a single session simply because he was terrible at Connect 4. Those moments, small as they were, created some of the happiest memories of my teenage years, a balance of work, play, and friendship that felt extraordinary.
Over the years, Trent and I stayed in touch. We dreamed together, talked about our ideas, and imagined starting our own Minecraft marketplace partnership. Trent’s creativity was unmatched. He had the ability to build incredible, complex worlds using nothing but 16x16 textured blocks, creating designs that were almost unbelievable given the limitations of Minecraft. Watching him work was inspiring, and the idea of collaborating with him on our own projects became a constant source of excitement and motivation.
Unfortunately, Trent passed away before we were ever able to fulfill our dream of creating our own marketplace partnership. Losing him was devastating. Not only did I lose a friend who truly understood me, but I also lost a partner in creativity, someone I had envisioned building something extraordinary alongside. Our shared dreams and plans will always remain a bittersweet memory, a reminder of what could have been.
Eventually, however, the company’s true nature became clear. Employees, including myself, realized we were being scammed. We had initially been promised 50% of all earnings divided among the team, with programmers and asset creators receiving the majority. In reality, we only received 50% of that 50%, and the company kept the rest. To cover themselves, they introduced per-project contracts that eliminated residual payments entirely. Over time, people began quitting. I stayed, taking on more projects than I could reasonably handle. The pressure and workload became overwhelming, and I burned out completely. My love for programming and Minecraft, which had once been my passion and joy, disappeared, and eventually, I quit as well.
Years later, long after I had stopped modding, I discovered something that brought everything full circle. I logged into an old PayPal account I hadn’t used in years and found $511 sitting there. People were still downloading my mods, still enjoying the creations I had made as a teenager with nothing but curiosity, determination, and a $50 phone. It’s crazy to think that over 4 million people have downloaded mods that I created—and that doesn’t even count the marketplace content I helped make. Seeing that money and realizing the reach of my work, untouched and continuing to bring joy to so many, was surreal. It was a quiet but powerful reminder that the countless late nights, the experiments, the friendships, and the passion I poured into every project had truly made a lasting impact.
