- I appreciate you writing this out, even salty. On communication: I hear you, and I'll own that Lumi's gift-opening bug dragged on longer than it should have without updates. That's fair.

But I want to be real about something: I don't get paid for this. Subeta operates on a fraction of what it made at its peak, and I'm essentially a solo developer running a 20-year-old platform as a hobby alongside a day job. I do this because I love it, I do this because it's a safe place for people online. When someone frames a bug taking too long to fix as "abandonment," it stings - because the alternative to slow fixes isn't fast fixes, it's no fixes. It's the site closing.

If you can point me to a virtual pet site from our era that's thriving with a growing userbase right now, I'm genuinely all ears. I'd love to know what they're doing differently. But as far as I can tell, we're all in the same boat - a niche genre that peaked in the mid-2000s, trying to keep the lights on for the communities that still care. And, I do still care.

On Kumos: This isn't a preference or an ego thing. Legacy runs on an operating system that's been unsupported for a decade. I pay a security firm monthly just to keep it patched. That money comes from somewhere (currently my pocket), and it's not sustainable. The version of PHP that we use also requires paying for security updates, because it has been abandoned by the creators. The Kumos Changelog shows that I'm making changes just about daily - including around the UI.

Kumos uses JavaScript features that have been standard in browsers for 8+ years. If it's genuinely not working on Linux Mint, I want to figure out why - not to prove you wrong, but because I want you to be able to play. I am not trying to make Kumos impossible to play for anyone, it is not using bleeding edge functionality and should work for everyone -- that it doesn't is a bug. Recently another user who has been having the same issues as upgraded their graphics card firmware and that suddenly resolved the issue.... i do not have control over the software running on graphics cards, that is so far outside of my boundaries to resolve. I'm hopeful that a similar fix is out there for other folks, but I am not a low level graphics card programmer.

On the TERF thing: I genuinely don't understand what you're saying here or how it connects to how we run the site. Trans players have been a core part of this community for our entire run. If you're implying something about Subeta's policies or culture, I need you to be direct, because I'm not letting vague implications sit.

Flight Rising is a fair example, though I'd note they launched in 2013 with modern infrastructure, not 2004 on PHP that predates most security standards. They're doing well, and I'm genuinely happy that a site in this genre has grown and keeps thriving.

On the rest:

"Lack of communication" - I find this one frustrating, honestly. I've posted extensively on the forums over the last four years about our situation. If you're reading everything, you've seen me explain repeatedly that we're a skeleton crew and that Kumos isn't up for debate - it's a necessity.

Discord vs Forums - Yes, I communicate more on Discord. It's faster, it's easier to get quick feedback, and I have limited hours in the day. I'm one person with a day job doing this out of love for a community I've been part of for two decades. I physically cannot maintain the site, build Kumos, and have lengthy forum discussions about every decision. I'm genuinely glad users have been bridging that gap by bringing Discord updates to the forums - that's exactly the kind of community support that makes sense. If you're looking for a way to volunteer, honestly? That's a great one. (I know that's not the answer you're hoping for, but it really does help.)

"Use the users" / Volunteers - I appreciate the enthusiasm, and I know it comes from a good place. But I've addressed this before: we can't easily take on volunteers. There are real legal complications around having volunteers do work that overlaps with paid staff. It's not as simple as "let someone jump in and draw a few items." Every time we've tried to make volunteer programming work, it's ended up taking more time to coordinate than it saved. I'm not saying this to be dismissive - I'm saying it because I've tried, and it's harder than it looks from the outside. The Subeta codebase, especially Legacy, is extremely complex and almost entirely undocumented. It can take days just to write up what a single page is supposed to do - and that's days I'm not spending actually moving things forward. And thank you, we appreciate the item suggestions, we have documents with about 4,000 items we'd love to draw if we had the resources. We have about 8 pet colors entirely sketched out with backstories and how we'd love to release them, if we had the resources. We all appreciate the suggestions and have incorporated them into those documents. We have plenty of ideas for items that we'd release every day as an advent item for Melody, we don't have the money to pay illustrators to draw 3 items a day.

Promises unfulfilled - This one's fair, and I'll own it. I've gotten better about not announcing things until they're close to ready, but I know I've burned trust in the past by getting excited about features that didn't materialize on time, or at all. I'm trying to do better. As for dates and exact timelines - the rest of the team is also operating from positions where they have day jobs too. I hear you on things like the Melody's Cottage situation - I was pinged in the thread multiple times and I responded that as far as I could tell, things were working how they should. When I had the time and was able to investigate, there were improvements. I'm also sad that they came at the end of the month, that's when I had the time to focus my attention on that feature for a couple of minutes.

The bottom line: I'm working as fast as I can to move things to Kumos while incorporating real feedback. The navigation was overhauled based on user input. Important links are being added. Widget navigation is coming. This is the direction we're going. If your subscription doesn't feel worth it given that reality, I genuinely understand, and I'm sorry. But I can't promise something I can't deliver, and I won't pretend we're something we're not.

This isn't a big corporation. It's a handful of people working incredibly limited hours to keep this alive. That's not news - I've said it in thread after thread. You can look at the online user counts and make a reasonable guess at how many active players have active subscriptions.

This is a labor of love. If you have direct, concrete suggestions - like a group of users who want to take ownership of a specific thing, or a specific process you'd like to see changed - I'm happy to hear them. But vague frustration is hard for me to action on, and I'd rather spend the limited time I have moving things forward.

Really, really, not at all! And I hope it sounds more glamerous than carrier pidgeon. When I'm talking quickly in the discord about making an update to quests, for example, having someone not only take what i say and bring it back here, but then are able to grab me at those same moments and say "hey people also said x was broken last time".

I'm also trying to make it a little bit easier to bucket these things. I'm adding labels to particular parts of the site (it takes a little bit of manual labor to make them work - so bare with me!) to say they're in "beta" on Kumos, and link to forums. Those forums have a bug and feedback forum, and hopefully that's where I'll post updates and hopefully we can get the cycle moving faster on the site without needing discord at all.

But it is really helpful to facilitate communication where it's happening!

Yup 🙏 And I'm about to have a few days where I have a ton of things to post, threads that I can wrap up (and a little bit of time from my primary job 😅) to set up a lot more scaffolding to give clear places to leave feedback (lots more forums in the kumos forum)

The short answer is that it didn't work out, and we're not going to discuss staffing decisions in detail.

The longer answer, since it ties into what I've been saying: a community manager role only works if there's someone on the other end who can actually action things. What ended up happening was a lot of "I'll ask about this!" followed by asking in Slack, followed by me being too buried to respond (or having to triage what I could respond to), followed by weeks of "sorry, still nothing!" That's not gratifying for anyone - not for the person in the role, and not for the users waiting on answers. You've all said in the past that even a "we're aware!" is better than silence, but when that was the status quo, it didn't land that way. It just felt like broken promises from someone who had no real control over the outcomes.

So let me be super direct: the only person who can make changes to the site right now is me. I am the blocker. On communication, on features, on fixes - it all runs through one person with limited hours. Me! We've brought on volunteer programmers in the last two years, given them GitHub access, ramped them up... and watched them fizzle out because the codebase is genuinely daunting. That's not a criticism of them. It's just the reality.

If the lack of communication is what eventually drives you away from Subeta, I understand. But feedback about wanting more communication isn't going to create more communication - I'm already the bottleneck, and I'm already at capacity.

What I am asking for is specific, concrete feedback: features you'd like to see prioritized, or things you'd like to take ownership of and actually drive. I'm genuinely happy to facilitate community-driven content - forum games, wardrobe challenges, events, whatever. Kumos is being built as a solid platform, but we need people building on top of it because we don't have the capacity to do everything ourselves.

And I want to end on a positive note: a lot of the slog is actually behind me now. Kumos has basically all of the bones of the Legacy site in place, and I can move features over in a day or less and get them up for testing. (Yes, that testing happens in Discord first because it's fastest for me - but as you can see from all the new threads, I'm working on bringing more of that to the forums too.) Those updates have been making it to the change log, which you can leave comments on.

I'm going to start actively replacing links in Explore on Kumos and continuing to incorporate layout feedback. Things are moving. I highly suggest using this time now to provide feedback - in the last few days I've got in major fixes that reduced the annoying GPU & CPU usage, and just pushed up a number of fixes for mobile devices.

I know folks weren't thrilled with this year's advent calendar because of the item selection - but building something that could pull items from all the way back to 2009, offer multiple choices, and run on a daily timer? A lot of our features going forward are built on exactly that kind of system. It took a long time, but a lot of that work is now complete.

Another great example: That thread that is giving 100 New Years Tokens for leaving a memory about Subeta. That took 30 minutes to make. It's an entirely new view in the forums, and it rewards currencies. I can really build things on top of that, especially if put in the hands of users who want to build together.

I hear you! We've done this in the past and it just hasnt' worked out, the problem is that it still requires someone on the other end to do the project management side of things. If I fix a bug, going back and doing the follow up, making sure it's fixed and then closing the issue. I just don't have time to do it, and it becomes another link that folks fill in and then gets ignored.

😭 thank you!

So this is where we are: We don't have a ton of illustrative capability right now. We have insanely talented artists working on the next holiday. As our user base slowly dwindles, they end up with a few priorities. The next month's cash shop items (to keep us going), the next holiday we have coming up to keep status quo (so new items in the typical places), typical updates (millionaire center, seasonal updates, quest shops, etc) and that has left us with almost no capacity to even think of things like... a new game. Or anything new.

But I can basically do ✨ anything ✨ programming wise. If you make a mockup of what you want, I can probably make it happen on Kumos. Tell me all of the things that bother you about the themes. The pages. I really want to make it work.

I don't want to toot my own horn too loudly, but I'm a genuinely skilled programmer. I've been paid well by startups and governments alike, and honestly? It's because of all the skills I learned building Subeta from those teenage years. The communication, the deep understanding of users - I've been able to benefit off of the skills and knowledge tenfold.

and take a look at the pet profile feedback thread, it sounds like that is a place where you'd have a ton of helpful feedback :D

I think you've got some kind of bug -- can you explain more to me? What browser are you using, are you browsing from your phone? (If so, there have been updates recently to make the sidebar work)

There is a sidebar on desktop persistent:

You can use the customCSS system on Kumos! I'm sure there is someone out there who can help you migrate that to the site, the only issue has been that I've been making changes frequently enough that things break easily.

But changing the color scheme itself is very easy, on purpose!

A conversation for another thread, for sure, but I'm happy to do a small breakdown.

Our costs monthly costs are roughly:

• Servers: Legacy subeta, kumos, new.subeta.net, database, cache, all the little bits and pieces that make the site work.
• Payroll: the most expensive by far! staff artists, and our incredible support folks, plus managing the site content and who does things like taxes, processing payroll, making sure that bills get paid.
• Subscriptions: Lawyers to ensure we aren't breaking the law , accountants to make sure our taxes are correct (they're very complex because of doing business internationally and in every state!) things like Slack and Notion for us to organize our work, github where our code lives, etc.

And then sometimes things come up, like needing to buy a new piece of hardware for an artist (computer, drawing materials) or something else unexpected.

Our income comes from direct CSC purchases and subscriptions. Subscriptions are great because we can see exactly how much we can expect to come in month to month and that stays fairly stable. Direct CSC purchases fluctuates heavily and typically is driven by things like CW pawn shop opening or sales. Everything that comes in from this goes to pay for the site!

Unfortunately some months especially recently, those numbers haven't added up to what we need. It hasn't been anything huge - but it just means that I've been dipping into my own savings in order to not need to do things like further reduce our team or make folks take pay cuts.

In many cases it's been something like... last month we were really far behind in processing events because of Mysterious Melody and a lot of people jumping in and having fun. When the queue gets backed up, it means that things like the autopricer also take longer, and events take longer to go out, etc. So I spun up a new, very powerful, server for a few hours to manage the queue and get it back down to a normal number of events our regular processor could handle. We didn't budget for that and so it was just easier for me to eat the cost.

Thank you! They're also linked in the footer under theme settings!

I'm also working on the speed 🙇‍♂️ now that it's running much better in browser, I can focus on some of the server-side speed improvements. Hopefully you'll notice a difference over the next few days (and if not, please keep giving the feedback!)

Tag yourself: I, too, am Keith's 21-year-old baby.

Kidding, kidding.

But, fr, I'm still here after 21 years! xD And I'm thrilled with Keith's continuing hard work and dedication. He's a one-man powerhouse, a force of nature, and it's awesome. We're a skeleton crew now, but I think we're all grateful for Keith and the fact that Subeta's still standing.

can you be more specific? there is image uploading now on the Kumos site (you can drag & drop into the text area or use the upload button) so if you could just take a few screenshots of things that you really like, or what you've done with your customCSS.

i can try to make Kumos look more like legacy, but I have no idea what your css looks like!