Grief (goodbye Goatlings)
This is just a sad post, more of a diary than blog of me grieving over losing a comfort site I used to visit on and off for years.
It's weird, I am still watching a site be alive, but know it's in its final sunset days.
If you follow me on Neocities you know I've been making a shrine around Goatlings, a virtual pet site around ... err, well, goats. It's recently been marked for shutdown by the owner, after years of lack of transparency for costs/upcoming updates, staff coming out about lack of communication, overworking, and shit pay ... and the fact that once it was revealed that the new admins that were coming in—after the owner had said she'd step down—had one of the admin's IP address match the owner's, and the PayPal buy links still led to hers ... it all kinda imploded.
The site shut down, with a message that it was sunsetting permanently. It'd open the 23rd to the 31st for people to gather images, messages ... all while stripping the forums completely to be used, or viewed.
I'm mad. I'm still mad. And sad. Not a crying sad, but an empty sad in seeing a community gather together to share impossible goals and to realize them, to share memories, childhoods formed around this game ... and even though I can't say it was my own primary game, there was still some comfort in a game I've been on since 2017.
Some part of me is glad to see closure to staff and people who have had shit experiences, and to have the opportunity to move on with their life. Some part of me will ache because sites like this are so niche that it's hard to fill it with anything else as virtual pet sites are all unique in how they function, their art, etc.
I know Subeta had some shit with the owner mismanaging funds so badly (buying exotic peacocks instead of paying the staff, lol), but that's not a site I play. This isn't far from that.
It feels weird to grieve for a site, but I feel like I am. Grief is also weird to me, it's not crying, even when family members have died. It's a sad, slow burning ember that leaves an empty hole. Memories that you cherish, but can never truly be replicated again as the one who has formed it is now gone. Some people I have found again and connected in other places, but everything will slowly scatter.
Maybe I should start backing up my Flight Rising stuff slowly. I doubt that site will die anytime soon, but scrambling in the last days, refreshing shops and listing items, checking HTML and code and everything, has left a weird tiredness in me and a lack of ability to focus on anything else until the 31st arrives. I don't even trust her to leave the site up that long.
I scroll and read through profile messages of people who thank the site (read: community) for everything, that want to share their remnants with others. I scroll through old friends who haven't been on in years, and wonder how many people will only realize the site is gone weeks, months, years from that tiny little window that was offered to salvage everything.
(At least I know someone is scraping the site to try to rescue everything.)
Fuck you Kris for closing the site during the holidays. A final middle finger to the community that has upheld you and given you money to survive and to support a community, staff, and site they adore, and this is what you do for it.