🚨 We won't let this place die - An Important announcement

[AndyR]

"We won't let this place die, we will actively kill it."

I jest, but only partially. Removing permanent members+ without first deciding and clearly communicating what the criteria for free renewal is was a HUGE misstep. If it's going to take a few posts or reviews or similar, that's a totally reasonable ask. If it's going to be something that requires X, reddit, or insta levels of activity, that is WAY too big of an ask, and everyone will leave.

Take lessons from the gacha business community. They have all realized that they will NEVER squeeze a single penny from the overwhelming majority of their userbase. There are a lot, a lot of people who cannot or will not ever pay for something like this, but those people are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the overall business model.

The value of this kind of forum IS the community. If you kill off the 90% who cannot or will not pay, the whole thing will die, even for those that did pay. Change your goals to reflect a plausible reality. there's no way in hell this costs $2200 in server costs. It's a forum, you are not serving the files. Clearly spell out what your REASONABLE participation maintenance requirements are ASAP. You still have time to salvage this, because at the end of the day, we all WANT this to exist.

 

[tbtbtbt]

see this? this is beautiful, please keep doing this:

You must be registered to see attachments

"This attachment cannot be shown at this time. Please try back later."

whether it's one thing or another, there's always something broken here

 

[tbtbtbt]

You want to know why I stopped donating to this site? This:

You must be registered to see attachments

This site lurches from one crisis to another on an almost daily basis. Every decision is contradicted, every promised feature never materialises, plans are scrapped, altered or abandoned without warning, and then there's a regular sprinkling of what appear to be huge technical mistakes thrown in too.

this is exactly what i think 95% of users are thinking.... why would i ever want to donate money to a site that's had half a dozen fake devs take the money and run for a "latest page" update..
then when everything is still broken, then they introduce paid tiers.. guys.. not a single improvement was made before paid tiers was introduced
and even when you've previously paid for permanent members plus, they act like a Nest thermostat or whatever and suddenly even though you already paid, now it's gone and you need to pay for a subscription service

also, the same mistake is made over and over wiping data... but i'm supposed to pay money every month to a webadmin that's never heard of proper backups, or a separate dev environment for testing??

if you want this site to thrive.. and it you want people to donate, get rid of all the ridiculous crises the guy above mentioned.. people aren't going to donate because they don't trust the schizo track record of the site
all that's going to happen going down this path is people will stop visiting the site, and another one will take this one's place

 

[tbtbtbt]

The value of this kind of forum IS the community. If you kill off the 90% who cannot or will not pay, the whole thing will die, even for those that did pay. Change your goals to reflect a plausible reality. there's no way in hell this costs $2200 in server costs. It's a forum, you are not serving the files. Clearly spell out what your REASONABLE participation maintenance requirements are ASAP. You still have time to salvage this, because at the end of the day, we all WANT this to exist.

ditto on this... i might be remembering wrong, but like 8-10 months ago wasn't the ask for server costs <=$500 ... $2200?.. seriously? it's a forum

 

[Arachel]

"We won't let this place die, we will actively kill it."

I jest, but only partially. Removing permanent members+ without first deciding and clearly communicating what the criteria for free renewal is was a HUGE misstep. If it's going to take a few posts or reviews or similar, that's a totally reasonable ask. If it's going to be something that requires X, reddit, or insta levels of activity, that is WAY too big of an ask, and everyone will leave.

Take lessons from the gacha business community. They have all realized that they will NEVER squeeze a single penny from the overwhelming majority of their userbase. There are a lot, a lot of people who cannot or will not ever pay for something like this, but those people are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the overall business model.

The value of this kind of forum IS the community. If you kill off the 90% who cannot or will not pay, the whole thing will die, even for those that did pay. Change your goals to reflect a plausible reality. there's no way in hell this costs $2200 in server costs. It's a forum, you are not serving the files. Clearly spell out what your REASONABLE participation maintenance requirements are ASAP. You still have time to salvage this, because at the end of the day, we all WANT this to exist.

It's Xenforo I believe.

Xenforo License - 195
Optional enhanced Search - 60
Option Resource Manager - 70
Optional Media Gallery - 70
Optional Installation Service - 60 (probably couldn't have even used this given the content here)
Optional Branding Removal - 350

805 for EVERYTHING on offer out the door. At one point funds were used for personal animal related expenses as I recall as well.

The branding removal is a one time expense I believe and the License is a one time expense as well so take the 195 and 350 of subsequent bills and that gives you 260, take away the installation service that'd be 200 per month for the enhanced search, resource manager and media gallery which are a monthly fee. Transparency what they're actually using the money for would give people far more confidence when purchasing and assurances that that's what the funds are actually going for as well and not an instance of "Something came up so I'm pulling funds for that instead of using it for the site" which is what people sent the money for. Somebody who pays more attention can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was for his girlfriend's pet that he pulled money for in the past.

 

[Phenom]

You want people in 2026 to be sitting on a forum for games like this and still be active. Are you serious? Most folks come here, find a game, download it, and gratefully jerk off. And you want people with one busy hand to be active on the forum. That's insane. With all due respect to the administration. You don't give points for simple lurking, so what's the actual point of it all? I've been on this forum almost since its beginning and I've already lived through one similar shake-up with member+. And here we go again. Nobody likes quiet lurkers. And that's a mistake.

 

[thrashpoint]

Ok, so members+ was deleted, got it. I assumed it would be backed up and all would go back to normal. What is the reason for lewdcorner going back on their word that members+ would be permanent?

With all of the issues the site has had, I at least found some comfort that my members+ was safe as I trusted the word of the staff. I'm a lurker, I did my grind back when members+ was first unveiled. We were assured we wouldn't ever need worry about this. I'm not fighting for a spot that was promised to be safe again and definitely not every 30 or so days.

I know the LC staff will change their minds a few times before this settles, but I'm gonna be honest... I'm finally losing faith. This feels like an arbitrary kick in the teeth. I just hope everything returns to normal because with all of it's flaws I like this place and I'd like to continue to visiting it.