Hello everybody,
Today, I come with more bad news for BrokenLens.
Following up on
https://brokenlens.xyz/forums/threads/brokenlens-needs-your-support.140110/
our campaign back in December was able to keep the gears turning around here for a few more months, and for that I thank everyone who helped out. A special thanks goes for those who sent in donations as well, it was an incredibly generous act and some of you single handedly covered multiple of our hosting bills.
Unfortunately though, during the past 2 months, BrokenLens only generated negative revenue yet again, there hasn't been enough sales to cover all of our next hosting bills even after exploring cheaper options. we do need quite a lot of resources to keep the network up and running.
You also may have noticed we haven't been pushing out updates as quick as we did in the past, and honestly, part of the reason is the lack of motivation, perspective and joy that I, Gabriel, once had working for BrokenLens.
I personally have been feeling really unwell both mentally and physically with the situation we are going through, be it all the burn out, be it the loss of revenue and subsequently the inability of keeping both myself and the server up even after investing my own funds in it, be it our dwindling player counts through the years, be it the unfair competition we've gathered after featured servers were introduced (In Mojang's own words: there isn't a process of application to become a featured server, Mojang simply decides who they will choose to become featured. - essentially deciding which servers succeed and which servers fail. featured servers not only have access to a broader audience, but also, among other things, access to essential tools for steadily keeping up with new game updates. Let me ask you guys, is this fair competition?). this whole situation has been dragging on for years and years, and the thing is: it has not been easy.
When we officially launched back in January 14th, 2016, we were an immediate success, gathering around 50 thousand registered players in just one week. this was even before we had a build team and developed a way for players to seamlessly switch between servers - if you tapped on an NPC it would kick you out and show you the direct IP address for the game servers. we pushed massive updates daily and it turned out to be our most successful year ever peaking at nearly 15k concurrent players, sometimes even more.
today, we sit at 12.3 million registered players from almost every single corner of the world, and this is a huge achievement for us.
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Along the years, we formed the most wonderful staff team we could have ever asked for, our builders, staff managers, admins, moderators, helpers, everyone in the staff team is extremely talented at what they do, and we couldn't have gone as far as we did without them. they made this server possible in so many ways I can't even express in just words, and I'm extremely proud of calling this team the best one in the world.
If you are a BrokenLens player, I'm sure they all have touched your life in some way or another, even if you don't realize how yet. And I would like to thank them for everything they've done and accomplished here, from the bottom of my heart.
I'm sure at this point you already know what I'm about to announce. and it's something that makes me extremely sad both for the staff team and the players. I never wanted to have to take this decision.
But, BrokenLens cannot keep itself afloat anymore, and I have to start thinking of my future too. I need to move on and find a different job to pay for my bills. I need to start thinking of my mental and physical health at some point. and unfortunately, the only choice I have moving forward, is to close the BrokenLens servers permanently :(
This has not been an easy decision for me, and it's been a source of uncountable sad emotions during the past few days. I know some of you will be sad, and some of you will be mad, but finally, I've come to the conclusion it has to happen.
April 16th, 2022 is the day, at
11:59PM EST.
As the clock ticks midnight, all BrokenLens servers will be switched off forever. and if something good comes out of all of it, I hope it's the good lasting memories and friendships we've all made in there through the years. We've all learned something in this long journey, and BrokenLens might have failed as a network, but if we were able to affect your life positively in some way, in the end, our mission will have been a success.
Only the servers are gonna be affected by this decision, the forums and the app will remain online for as long as possible so our collective history can be preserved. and we will be removing our filters to allow everyone to recommend different servers and discuss any Minecraft and off-topic related content here for the foreseeable future. feel free to recommend new forum sections as well.
That is all,
I wish all the staff members and contributors good luck in your future endeavours,
And thank you everyone for supporting us till the end.
Gabriel Dickinson | Founder
! I even been working on a new MM maps for BL, but I will scrap it! if anyone want's downloads to 3 maps I made, let me know and I will send it to you!
specially to my best friends.
