I wasn't really sure how to begin writing this post but my hand has been forced (probably for the better since I've been putting it off). Recent events have drastically changed the world we live in and Virtuadopt has finally been affected by it, in the form of server costs.
For those of you who do not already know, most of Virtuadopt's users live in Germany and the surrounding areas. For the best experience across the largest part of the user base, the server is hosted in Germany. As many of them probably know, electricity costs in Germany have been steadily increasing. Earlier this year, I received a message from the company that hosts our server. They are raising the monthly cost for the server starting March 20th. So where does that leave us?
Can we justify the increase costs for a web game that has gone mostly cold and isn't receiving updates? Is it worth the time to attempt to relocate to somewhere cheaper? Are we just prolonging the inevitable shutdown? These are the questions I don't have good answers for. But, maybe my indecision should be used as an opportunity for a discussion as a community. Come to a decision as a community. So what are our choices?
- Let's get the obvious, painful one out first. We can just let this be Virtuadopt's final moments and sail off into the Solrock. Obviously, no one wants that but it's a possibility and has its place on the table.
- Attempt to relocate to a cheaper server elsewhere, and continue to limp on with some features still broken. I'm going to take this bullet point to note, it's probably not realistic to expect anyone to want to pick up the torch as it exists now. Virtuadopt is literally 13 years old and the code base hasn't aged like a fine wine. Many parts of the site exist in a half updated state, completely different from the next page. This is entirely my fault that it is in this state, but the site became too big and in place upgrading grew too problematic and time consuming to continue.
- Building off of point 2, do we use this opportunity to start over? Hit the reset button. Trim the proverbial fat. Flip Virtuadopt like an Inkay and see what evolves from it. (I'm having fun with these Pokemon references please don't hate me.) Go back to the basics, how things were in 2009, start over with just Kanto. I Pikachu, you Pikachu, with all the shiny Mew things. I'm just spitballing this half baked idea. But what if we trimmed Virtuadopt back to the basics: adopting, clicking, and trading. Additional features could be added on later, but we have that new backend engine we need. Your immediate thought through all that was probably, what about my existing adoptables being ported over? We probably could migrate them, it's not like they are lost, but in some sort of "locked" state because like I said, everything is very stripped down for a newer system with a more modern way of doing things. Create something that doesn't need any one person to manage, but the staff and artists control what events run (kind of already exists but complicated). Is all this even something I can even commit to? Maybe, with a little help.
BTW, I purged the GTS cause it's evidently broken from one of my previous upgrade attempts. Probably should just disable it... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯