Hello everyone!
As the group has grown, and our founders have taken on more real-life responsibilities, you may have noticed we have had less time for maintaining the group. Our fabulous mods have been doing excellent work behind the scenes but the workload is still very intense. In order to put some balance back into our lives and the group, starting 1st of Jan 2024, the Founders (@DonPurrleone & @lumivarium) will be going into a semi-hiatus for at least a year. We understand this is quite sudden, but due to real life and mental health reasons the Founders need a true break without group responsibilities hovering in the background. We hope that taking this time off will let us focus on some healing, and possibly also some group maintenance we have not had the time or energy to get to for a long time.
During this semi-hiatus, you should not expect any new dilutions, mutations, BAs etc, and breedings will be closed (possibly with the exception of a few limited seasons). There also will not be any system updates during this time. The USD part of the Shoppe will be closed and USD imports might be more limited in availability than they have been. Any decision that requires founder-input, such as very complex designs or rule changes or clarifications, will have to wait until our return.
However, most parts of the group will continue as normal, courtesy of our amazing mod team. Non-breeding events will be running as usual throughout the year, items can be redeemed and will still be available for purchase with Unicornian Gold, and foal designs and imports will be open in the same capacity as currently. As such, this might be a great opportunity to give some love to your existing sparkles if you haven’t had the time this year <3
The majority of the teams will remain the same, with @Monsleonis still in action as a Lime, however @Tigglesaurus will be stepping down from Lime duties and resuming responsibilities only in the Import and Design Teams, with a side order of Website maintenance. There will not be any new hires during the year, but the current mods will be training behind the scenes and you might see them switch colours or responsibilities.
The strike system will continue to be in effect, and we ask that you please send any reports to BU-Admin as usual. The account will continue to be monitored, and we will help deal with any pressing matters as soon as we are able.
We appreciate all our members and this group so much. As well as getting some much needed respite, we hope that this break can help the backlogs and workloads even out a little and put us on more sturdy footing going forward, so we are ready to grow at a more sustainable rate in the future.
See you soon,
Don & Lumi xx
PS: Stay tuned for Bouclemas announcements coming soon!