Shutdown due to budget issues

[Philipp]

Hi everyone,

As indicated in an earlier post, our server and development budget has unfortunately run out, so Anyland (and its sibling Manyland) will shut down. Server costs increased quite a bit this year, while revenues dropped again. Scott and I are currently working on efforts like getting proper local backups, preserving bits and pieces, and looking into other ways to put up museum screenshots and such.

As Scott has another day job, these tasks are challenging for us -- Scott is doing a lot of after-hours and Sunday work.

We don't have a specific shutdown date, but it may be January. We want to update with a more specific date as soon as possible -- it currently depends a bit on the shutdown-related work we're doing.

If you have any options to create memories, like making videos of your area or exporting items of yours via JSON, please do so, so we can put the memories on many shoulders together.

I would also be very interested to hear what platforms you may move to, or already have, as replacement. I heard interesting things about Resonite, and there's also VR Chat.

We want to thank again all of you for the amazing things you did here, and the friends and happy memories you made. Anyland was a creative festival thanks to all of you, and one of the most amazing communities I had the honor to be part of.

Much love!
Scott & Philipp


Edit: Dear everyone... We're eying* February 29th for the budget-related shutdown.

*That's a teary eye.

[GAMEDRIX 🦴]

I'm extremely sad to see this happening in a matter of two months...

I would love if you guys could keep an offline version of the game up so we could still use the tools without the need for internet, because without it I'll be lost truly :(

[manic221]

As I said in the other post I am really sorry to hear this.

I will try and log on in the next couple of days and maybe make some videos and do a tour of some of the areas that I love so much.

[Sloppy McFloppy]

RIP to this wonderful creativity catalyst

[Zetaphor]

Philipp and Scott,

I want to start by thanking you both for all the time, money, and effort you have put into bringing these two (Anyland and Manyland) creative platforms into the world. These platforms have enabled so many to explore and develop an interest in both art and programming. I know many users of this community who found their start here and have now gone on hone their craft with more professional tools.

It is in fact the passion of that community that I am now asking you to lean on and into. While many of us have moved on to other platforms, we don't want to see Anyland disappear entirely. There are countless man-hours of creative effort that have been invested into content creation here and we feel that is something worth preserving and sharing with the world.

To that end we have undertaken multiple different projects to ensure that regardless of the outcome of these platforms what was created here will not be lost to time. Multiple community projects have been undertaken to document and archive the existing content, work it sounds as though both you and Scott are now attempting to complete.

I understand that you two are limited both in terms of finances and time when it comes to preserving the platform. This is where I was referring to leaning on your community. We have the knowledge, the time, and the interest in making sure this platform is properly archived in an accessible way. In fact multiple projects are already underway to see that through:

Anyland

• We have archived 98% of Anyland's public areas and thing definitions, including images.
  
• We have completely documented the Anyland API.
  
• We have a nearly feature-complete tool that will take an exported Anyland area/thing JSON and create a standards compliant GLTF model that faithfully recreates the object as it would be viewed in Anyland.
  
• We have all of the prerequisites to create a single-player instance of Anyland once the servers go offline by way of a custom user-server and client mods. We're exploring alternatives to PUN to enable user-hosted multiplayer servers.
  
• A client mod that allows you to export every object in your inventory.
  
• An infrastructure for implementing client mods and new features is complete.

The intent is to take these 3D models and create a browser-based area viewer, where anyone can view and search all of the Anyland areas without requiring the client. All of this work is open source and available to anyone interested.

Manyland

I am simply reporting on this effort, as it's being undertaken by a separate group:

• Documented 99% of the REST API
  
• Documented the majority of the Websockets API
  
• Created area and snapshot backup tools
  
• Created a tool to recreate an area image from its exported data
  
• Efforts are underway to document the remainder of API's as well as creating exports of all public content

A Plea For Collaboration

Everything I've outlined above has been done by your community, for free, purely driven by our love of the platforms you've created.

We've been able to make this amount of progress entirely by reverse-engineering the client. Imagine what we could accomplish if we were able to collaborate directly with you and Scott! We would love nothing more than an opportunity to help secure a future for these platforms in whatever form that may be, be it functional clients or even simply a museum archive.

Please feel free to reach out to me to discuss any details of these or additional efforts further, we (both the Anyland and Manyland communities) would love an opportunity to collaborate directly with you <3

You can reach me via email: zetaphor at hey dot com, or via Discord as zetaphor. I can then show you the work we've completed and get you in contact with the rest of the people working on these projects.

Edits were typos and adding more bullets to the Anyland list, as we just got all the images today

[Jinx]

Thanks for the update and timeline!
Anyland is still 100% enjoyable and usable until it's shutdown.
For me it's always been the journey (creating reality around me with my own hands) and not the destination (final product of a creation/world).

Originally posted by Philipp:

If you have any options to create memories, like making videos of your area or exporting items of yours via JSON, please do so, so we can put the memories on many shoulders together.

I wish more people would have been (or do now!) making videos & tours of their worlds and creations. Always fun to watch. Sometimes it seems like only Delco & I have... and we have *many* hours of walk thrus of our detailed worlds & experiences. =)
Here's my YouTube playlist of videos to date, with a few more planned to come that I'll be prioritizing:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiFAZjm6EQ6vKXnjA46iTm7YrcgSDwuwC&si=NQc4njv4JBtWzrdI

[Amplified]

Whoever is clown reacting posts is the entire circus.

[Daddy_Cage]

Philipp and Scott, thanks for everything youve done to help create and support this community. Having spoken with you countless times, I know I believe in your vision and I think it'd be a trajedy to lose anyland forever. I implore you to please work alongside your community to keep anyland accessible even not if as it stands. Zetaphor is great resource for this, but I implore you to speak with us directly in the Anyland Discord.

[ferny]

Please for the love of god produce some way of running this locally. This game is a piece of history and an incredible film making tool. Without it, all of my works can never be followed up on and I cannot continue filmmaking in this style and medium. Don’t let this go away forever.

[Lenzic]

I got my first VR headset for Christmas a few years back, and was browsing through the Steam VR titles to see what I should try out. Anyland passed by on the recommends, and at first I thought it looked obnoxious in style and gameplay. The next day, however, I was doing the exact same thing and Anyland came up again, despite me having competed the previous recommended queue. The second time, for some ungodly reason, it looked intriguing. Something about the game that second time around just sorta had me staring at the trailer for a little while. So, I hit install.

Pressing that one button, that day, has literally changed the course of my life. All because of the developments in this game, the relationships I’ve made, the events that have occurred, I now have a career path in mind, a great group of close friends that I cherish, a strong sense of belonging in my life, a partner, and so much more. It’s hard to explain exactly how thankful I am for this games existence, since I’m not the best with words. Despite this, I just really want to say thanks for everything. Seriously, if this game never existed, I have no idea where I would be. Dead, lost, still jobless, maybe some lame dead-end worker, who knows? I have what I have thanks to this game, and I’ll be eternally grateful for it, regardless of what may happen to it in January.

[Cjramos22]

Please cooperate with zetaphor or come up with some way to run this game locally as ferny mentioned. Anyland is an amazing creative tool that would be heartbreaking to see completely lost to time.

[Gavyynn]

This is really devastating to hear, I practically met half of my friends through this game and it really means a lot to me. If it weren't for this game I don't know if I would have ever decided to go down the path of game development. If anything is going to be done, please find a way to run the game locally or literally anything to preserve it.

Other than that, thank you Phillip & Scott for making such an amazing game. It was truly an amazing 7 year experience that I absolutely will remember and cherish.

Quite literally nothing can be better than this game.

[Fazzi]

I can't say anything that hasn't already been said.. Thank you for Anyland. It has without a doubt brought me some of the best memories of my life. With the opportunity to meet wonderful people and the near limitless avenues for creative expression, I only wish that more people could have shared this experience.

[KingOfAllPineapples | Hyplex.co]

Thanks for such an amazing game as well as making my favorite VR game to date

[Rustybot]

It's been an honor everyone. I hope our paths cross again elsewhere in the VR space.
Thank you for dreaming up this wonderful little game Philipp, it's meant the world to us.

[GAMEDRIX 🦴]

I love you Philipp!