Before a panic breaks out: the site is not going down and will continue to be supported. If you paid for a premium membership you will get the service you paid for.
Let me explain...
PLAYDIPLOMACY.COM was originally started as a hobby project.
Quickly, it grew. More players, but also: more features! I wanted to create the best site possible of course, so the programmers kept on developing -- unfortunately, costs were getting quickly out of hand too.
I paid for all expenses, like the development by a programmer and server costs, from my own pocket. Even at $15 per hour, the programmer's rate, the site had cost me $10,000 after the first 6 months.
Yes, I care about Diplomacy that much and my business was doing well, so I thought: why not? But then, based on all the suggestions by forum members there were so much improvements left to make... and the costs were getting a bit much for me personally. That's why I introduced a Premium Membership in August 2008: for 12 euro or approximately 16 USD per year you could get access to Premium features like different variants, live games, anonymous games etc.
With the money coming in from Premium members, we didn't stop there, we kept on building! Right now we have 500 Premium members, which is GREAT and has really helped ease the burden!
Only... even with Premium memberships, I was (and still am) putting a lot of personal funds in the site. After all, 1 year of Diplomacy membership pays for approximately 1 hour of development, and then we're not even talking about server costs. And that's where the problem is: because the server was starting to become overloaded, it was also causing delays and game breakdowns -- increasing the costs of manual labour to fix and restart those games. I'm afraid that last month, a lot of "development hours" have gone into fixing errors, unfortunately.
I just ordered a new server, which should bring a stop to the delays and game breakdowns, but of course it also increases monthly expenses again.
Why I'm posting this message now? Because this site's price tag has amounted to $ 25,000. Yes, that much. And Premium memberships (and donations) have so far brought in $7,568.
Good, but not enough. It means I'm still about $17.5k short and unfortunately, at this moment (yes, the crisis), I can't afford putting any more money into this project myself for continued development. Even if I don't count the monthly server costs, with current membership payments, it will be 2 years before I'm break-even, if I stop development now. And stopping development has never helped a site grow, has it?
To make a long story short: if we want to continue development of the site (fixes, features, variants), we need money.
You'll probably be wondering: why didn't you make the Premium membership more expensive? Actually, that's what some members are suggesting (see thread: is Premium membership too cheap?), but keep in mind that, when launching it last year, I didn't know if the Premium membership would have any success at all -- and I wanted to keep the cost as low as possible so everyone could enjoy the benefits of Premium membership. I still want to keep it that way.
A few people with spare time have offered to do some development for the site -- but I'm not keen to that idea, since I don't want to get the source code out there and also it's very hard to get different programmers to produce code that actually works together.
Other suggestions were the sale of T-shirts (good, I like it), a tournament with an entry fee or even allowing betting on the site (and taking a fee).
But a lot of people have suggested that they would like to make a donation, next to the amount they're already paying for a Premium membership. And I like that proposal the best, because it's voluntary and you can decide the amount for yourself.
That's why I'm opening up a donations fund.
The donations fund will have small, realistic goals, for example: "we need $360 to develop a new variant" and everyone will be able to vote on which goals to set.
BUT the first goal will be to get this site break-even, and that's quite a hefty amount, as I mentioned: $25,000. I'm adding all money earned from donations and Premium memberships to the fund though, so with $7,568 in the fund we're already at 31%, NOT BAD!
And remember, even if $25,000 seems like a lot, every little bit helps!
The fund is now open, you can view the donation button here.
You're welcome to make any donation you see fit, if any at all. As always, donations will be used for development of the website.
To incentivise a bit more, users who donate $10 or more will receive a special "SPONSOR" rank on the forum. Users who donate $100 will receive the "ELITE SPONSOR" rank. If you'd like to donate more, we'll have to invent a new rank for that, you can suggest your own
Please also remember: I'm not asking for donations as a business, I'm asking for donations as a community, to improve the site.
Thanks for all your support!
Avalanche
EDIT: PS Please don't forget to include your username in the description! I probably can't tell from your real name what your username here is!
