I know I've been gone for over a year. No announcements, no updates, nothing. You deserve to know why.
I burned out. Hard.
For a long time, I couldn't even open the Discord. Every decision I made upset someone. Every feature I shipped, someone was angry about it. I was getting messages daily from people telling me I owed them something. And on top of all that, I watched the value of everything I'd built, everything I'd invested back into this thing, slowly bleed out.
At some point I just couldn't do it anymore. I had to step away completely or I was going to lose it. I started a new job, focused on other projects, and honestly tried not to think about GO for a while.
But here's what I can't ignore. Some of you never left. You're still claiming, still battling, still hanging out in your guilds. After a year of complete silence from me. That means something to me and I don't know if I've ever said that clearly enough.
Where Things Stand
So let me just be straight with you.
GO hasn't been paying for itself in a long time. My other projects cover the server costs. I'm not shutting it down, but let's be honest, in its current state it's on life support.
And I need to say something I've been sitting on for a long time. P2E doesn't work. I tried to make GO about the game with some crypto fun on top, but the pressure to make it a money printer never stopped. And honestly? Play to earn is just a pyramid scheme with makeup on. Growth only happens as long as new money comes in. No new money, slow death.
Look at Splinterlands. They sell you your possible fortune and the only ones getting rich off it are people already in the loop, people who are already wealthy, or the company itself. They sell you your dream, but 99% of the people I've talked to got burned on Splinterlands. Most of them just stick around because they're in too deep to walk away. Sunk cost fallacy running the whole show.
And I know I'm not innocent of that either. I sold stuff that I knew probably wouldn't land the way I hoped. I just didn't know what else to do. I tried, but I think the P2E foundation is so broken that I personally have no idea how to fix it. Putting another bandaid on it isn't an option anymore. If I do this again, it has to be done right. Because I can't be the guy that hundreds of people are ranting about because I couldn't fix something that might not even be fixable in that model.
And yeah, maybe I'm just not good enough for it. Maybe someone smarter could have figured it out. But that's where I am right now. I kept selling my own principles just to keep things running a little longer and I noticed way too late that I should have pushed back harder.
For the last stretch when I was still active, everything felt like bandaid on top of bandaid. No matter what I added, the same problems were still there. The economy. The runaway leaders at the top. The midgame grind that made people quit. I was patching holes instead of building something solid.
What I'm Proud Of
I've been working on other stuff these past months. Not ready to talk about what exactly, but it's been good for me. Reminded me what it feels like to build something without dreading every morning.
But I keep coming back to this game in my head.
I'm proud of what we built together. The guilds, the feuds, the theorycrafting, the community. That was real. That doesn't happen by accident. And it definitely doesn't happen in most games. A one-dev indie game on a niche blockchain? That's not supposed to have the kind of community you guys built. But it did.
A Fresh Start
So this is what I've been thinking about.
A fresh start. Not just another update. A full restart with a new theme. I'm thinking space/sci-fi, way more room for features. Not on Hive. I'm done with that whole scene. Too much greed, too much toxicity. Probably Solana or something similar, built with everything I learned from GO baked in from day one.
What stays:
- Scavenging
- Upgrades
- Battling
- Burn economy
- Guilds (non-negotiable)
What GO veterans get:
If you played GO, you won't be forgotten. I'm thinking exclusive prestige items, cosmetics, and a small headstart for veterans. Stuff that actually recognizes what you put in. Your levels, your items, crates you bought, overall progress. All of it converted into something meaningful in the new game. Not a 1:1 transfer, that wouldn't make sense. But a genuine thank you that gives you a real edge and bragging rights on day one.
What I want to fix:
- Top players running away uncatchably
- The midgame grind wall
- Equipment that was rushed out
- Competitive mode feeling disconnected from the main game
- Staggered release instead of shipping everything at once and patching forever
And the biggest one. Build it as a game first. If you come to play and maybe earn something along the way, great. But I'm not selling anyone a golden coin that'll be worthless in six months. That was always supposed to be the philosophy. I just let myself get pulled away from it because I was desperate to keep the lights on.
What Needs to Change
One thing I know for sure. If I do this, I can't be the sole point of contact anymore. That's what broke me last time. I'd need a small team. At least for community management, support, bug reports. I need to be more in the background building, not in the frontline taking hits every day. Otherwise we just end up in the same place again and I disappear for another year. Can't do that to you or to myself.
I've actually already been refactoring a lot of the codebase behind the scenes. But I'm not sure what all of this would look like yet. I don't know where exactly I'm heading with it. I'm not promising anything. I'm not even sure I'm fully ready to come back. But I'm thinking about it seriously and I wanted to hear from you before I go any deeper.
I Need Your Input
So I guess what I want to know is...
- Would you be into a fresh start like this? Or would you rather I keep building on what's here?
- What parts of GO absolutely MUST survive? What would you be fine losing?
- If we did a space rebrand, does that kill it for you or do you not care about the theme?
- And be honest with me. Is there even enough of you left to make this worth it?
I've always made the best calls when we figured things out together. That hasn't changed.
Yixn