Lythbound: Upcoming Closure of Lythbound

[TheGamingList]

Hello everyone,
It is with great sadness that we are making this post to announce the upcoming closure of Lythbound and its supplementary channels.

These years of creating Lythbound have been absolutely incredible, and infinitely meaningful. So much art has been created as part of the game, and that we inspired so many to create things makes all of this so worth the time invested.

Unfortunately, the march of capitalism comes for us all, and makes the sustained development of projects impossible without funding (whether that be through direct money or time, which also has value to capitalism). Lythbound has, unfortunately, reached the point where development cannot continue due to lack of this.

To be clear, this is no one's fault. And no one playing Lythbound should feel guilty for playing for free or "not paying enough." It has always been our intent that it should not be necessary to pay money and no one should feel as though they need to spend money to play. That so many were willing to financially support this project was always an honor; and if you did make a purchase or support the Patreon or support fundraisers in the past, please know that your support has meant more than could ever be expressed.

It is very difficult to say goodbye, but we hope that all who participated will continue to create in the future. To that end, our intentions for the future:

• Lythbound.com will remain accessible in some similar fashion to its current availability, for 3 months. Please use this time to save art and information that you would like to keep.
• The Patreon and cash shop have both been immediately adjusted so that funds cannot be transferred via these methods. (The Patreon is in a "paused" mode indefinitely -- it's recommended that Patrons unsubscribe at their earliest convenience.)
• After 3 months have passed, user data will be removed. This includes all account information, individual character information, and user-submitted artwork. Please be sure to save any artwork and information you wish to keep before this time.

The current scheduled date for user information to be removed is August 15th.

Additionally, the following features are being adjusted:

• ARPG art submissions, Lythian submissions, companion submissions, and custom pet submissions to the website are closed.
• All forum categories except Help & Questions and Lythbound General will be closed to new posts.
• All Discord channels except #general will be closed to new posts. Some channels will remain in read-only mode to retrieve artworks, etc. (Discord may be further closed to new posts ahead of the user information deletion date.)
• Support Tickets will remain open until the user information deletion date. We request that the ticket function be reserved for private and/or major issues during this time.
  • We can and will process account deletions during this time per GDPR requirements, however the user information removal date is effectively an account deletion and character void event for all accounts and characters. Thus we request simply waiting for that date for all data to be removed instead of submitting account closure and/or void requests, such that we are not inundated with deletion requests before that time.

 

Beyond this, we are currently investigating ways to more permanently archive information that might be used for creativity outside of Lythbound the game. As of now, we are planning to release the species concepts themselves (other than affiliate species, Pro-Gs and Fuwa Bozu, which are under their owners' jurisdictions) under a Creative Commons license. In all ways, this should cement their status forever as able to be used creatively and openly.

Additionally, we are taking steps to open source the majority of the website code (some collaborative work may be omitted to protect others' contributions), and archive (and share!) extra development information and details where we can.

 

Thank you so much to all of the staff and community members for contributing to Lythbound. This has been an incredible journey, and although it is time to prepare to say goodbye to this step of the journey, please never lose sight of your creativity and always look forward to the future.

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