HGG Community Forums

If you missed my last news post "BC Changes Plus Game News" please check the announcement section of the forum for context.

Poor Haystack is trying very hard to work on image generation unification but there have been several time critical things things that have popped up over the last two weeks keeping him from getting stuck into this project. This entire week has been spent going back and forth between the courthouse and with lawyers trying to get a missing bit of paperwork generated, notarized by the Secretary of State's office, and airmailed to Bulgaria. And the lawyers were not even sure what this document is called so I hope you will excuse us some delay on this project.

In related news

We have very reluctantly decided that for the next few months, we will be turning off background image generation for non-premium accounts. Everyone knows there is a cost of living crisis happening right now and when you are an entertainment company you feel those cut bucks intensely. It costs us thousands a month to generate all the images for the game and those costs keep going up as the mega corporations look to offset their increased costs.

What will this look like in-game?
If you have a premium account there will be no change. Thank you so much for choosing to support us every month. It means a ton and goes directly to supporting our family and keeping the game up and running. An extra special thank you to those who have volunteered to pay the higher price premium price. You are our superstars.

If you have a basic or no upgrade account, you (or someone else) will need to physically open a horse's page for the image to generate. This is how the game used to work, and honestly, it worked all right. If a horse is not important enough for someone to look at their page it means it probably isn't important for them to have an up-to-date image anyway.

Is this permanent?
It is our plan for this change to be temporary, but I want to be realistic with you that I don't know when it will go back. We are moving to a city with a much lower cost of living and economic depressions don't last forever, plus we are working on reducing the costs of our image generation system. I am hoping when the pendulum swings back it will be auto-images for all again sooner rather than later.

I just want to be upfront and honest with everyone about why this is happening. We will do our best to make sure this cost-cutting measure is as minimally disruptive as possible and hope it is an acceptable compromise.