Over the last few weeks, DracoStryx ownership and the admin team has been facing harassment, threats, and more from a former contributor. It has escalated to the level where we have involved the police and are initiating legal action. For the safety of ourselves, our admins, our players, and the game, we have chosen to put DracoStryx on hiatus.
During this hiatus period, we will be drastically rebooting the game and restructuring the admin team and ownership situation. We have realized that there is no reasonable way to resolve the fact that since the beginning to 2022, the game has been built on an enormous amount of assets that are uncredited and/or that we do not have a paper trail to prove that we own. We already started the replacement process a while back with the AP, Breeding, and Design revamps, as well as replacing art assets as necessary, but we did not have the resources or flex room to move as quickly as we would have liked.
The reboot will address long-running gameplay and functionality issues that have made the game stagnant, slow, grindey, and difficult to manage. We are planning to add more flexible, engaging, and growing mechanics to the game to breathe in new life. We will be working closely with PaperDemon to build mechanics that will be easy to automate with the objective of more things players can handle themselves and less wait time in queues.
While we’re sad to lay the old version of the game to rest, we’re hopeful and optimistic about the plans we’ve started for the new version. Over the many years DracoStryx has existed, we’ve thought of some incredible improvements to the game that the game’s structure didn’t quite allow. We’re looking forward to flying into the fresh, fun, and feathery heights of what DracoStryx can be at its best!
F.A.Q.
- Will I be able to import my current Stryx and genos into the new game? Yes! We don’t know exactly what this will look like yet, but you will be able to transfer your old characters onto our new imports and bring them into the new game.
- Will I be able to import my items? Unsure! Items may not end up being a perfect 1-to-1 equivalent across the two versions of the games. We’ll definitely keep in mind the fact that current players have worked hard for what they’ve earned and that should be reasonably reflected in the new game.
- Will we still be having the Great Harvest? We would really like to run one last GH to send off DracoStryx 1.0! However, it takes a significant amount of planning and prep, and our schedule has been severely disrupted by the amount of time it’s taken to handle the attacks. We’ll keep you updated as things progress.
- How long will the reboot take? Unsure! We will say that it’s unlikely we will launch before January 2024. We’ll do our best to go live again quickly– we’ll miss you as much as you miss us.
- Will it be the same as the current DracoStryx, just with new assets? No. We always have been and always will be dragon birds, but we’ve learned a lot since DracoStryx launched and we’d like to fix some foundational issues with how the game was structured.
- Will pubchat stay live? That will depend on how resource intensive it is to moderate. If the harassment campaign appears here, we will be at least temporarily shutting down pubchat.
- Will I be able to do anything in the queues during the hiatus? No. We will run ownership transfers and item transfers for the remainder of September to make sure that fulfilled deals are honored, but the queues will be shut down from here out.
- Can we have x in the new version/can we get rid of x in the new version? We are not currently taking suggestions for the new version of the game. We may open a call for thoughts when we’re closer to a resolution on the harassment situation.
- Is there going to be x or y in the new version? We’re working double time to sketch out the shape of the game. We’re throwing a lot of wall spaghetti, and are doing our best to refine the scope down to something we can re-release within a reasonable amount of time. The new game will start a little smaller than DracoStryx is right now, but we’ll be adding things as we go to keep things fresh so don’t worry about potentially missing parts!
- Can I still post DracoStryx art? Yes! You’re welcome to create as much art as you’d like, and you’re welcome to use your DracoStryx as personal characters as well as official game characters as it’s always been.
- Can I use my DracoStryx somewhere else? Yes! once again, as always, you are allowed to use your DracoStryx characters as personal characters. We just ask that if you're planning on selling what you make, you take all recognizable DracoStryx labels off of it. This includes lore names, species names, unique marking names, and anything that really only appears in this game specifically.
- I just made a purchase. Can I be refunded? Yes! We will be refunding any Ko-fi or item purchases since the sale (September 2023) started. If you purchased an import, you still own the design as a DracoStryx or a personal character and will not automatically be refunded. You may contact Gar-a-ash if you'd like to discuss an import you purchased from the group recently.
- Can we have further details about the harassment situation? The person in question has been banned from all DracoStryx spaces and PaperDemon. If you are approached by someone who seems aggressive, we recommend blocking and ignoring. The situation is being handled by law enforcement, and we recommend not getting involved.
