ID:1274193
 
Let's just make it very clear to a lot of people who don't spend a lot of time on the forum and aren't fully aware of the situation...

The ads are here to stay, and if they don't earn enough revenue, BYOND is being shut down indefinitely. If BYOND shuts down, that means no more BYOND games, no more live servers, no more master servers, no more key servers, no more passport checks, no more scoreboards, etc. etc.

Instead of complaining about the ads, try buying a membership to make them go away. Instead of whining about having to watch a 30 second ad while your game downloads, tell your friends about BYOND because the more people who come to visit, the more chances BYOND has of gaining new fans, developers, memberships.

If you are too young to understand; the world revolves around money, and nothing is free. The servers that BYOND runs on aren't free, the programmer who fixes the bugs and adds the feature isn't free, food isn't free, rent isn't free, web space isn't free. If you aren't willing to pay for these things, then sit back and watch those lovely ads who are keeping this alive for you.

This is actually a desperate act on behalf of the developers, and the more you moan and groan about the situation the more apt they are to just give up and leave this mess of a situation behind them.

So you decide!
I am blown away by how many people here are unable to understand that BYOND is financially broke. The servers are not ran on magical unicorn wishes and fairy powder; they're ran by the two hard-working staff members who for some reason still maintain this site for the most ungrateful community of crybabies I've ever seen.

There is no way around it: either BYOND has ads and/or people buy memberships, or BYOND dies. The entire service cannot remain free and still self-sustain itself. We cannot continue to demand more and more from BYOND without giving back something in return; it just does not work like that.

The ads really aren't that big of a deal. The game still loads while you watch them, and they only show up once every five minutes, so you probably won't even see them more than once a day. I've personally had them enabled the entire time throughout the pager beta. I also do not understand why we're discriminating towards BYOND for the ads; every other service out there plays ads before your Youtube videos, Flash games, etc. Once again though, it's okay if everyone else does it, but if BYOND does it then it is a crime.
In response to LordAndrew
LordAndrew wrote:
The servers are not ran on magical unicorn wishes and fairy powder

That you know of.
In response to LordAndrew
LordAndrew wrote:
There is no way around it: either BYOND has ads and/or people buy memberships, or BYOND dies. The entire service cannot remain free and still self-sustain itself. We cannot continue to demand more and more from BYOND without giving back something in return; it just does not work like that.

Even better, we make quality games, sell them and BYOND takes a cut of our sales. Win Win for everyone people.
We already have quality games.

I wonder how much money Tom got from NEStalgia.
Maybe we need to have a crack at the "sell them" part? If you have something people want, like NEStalgia, it's apparently a breeze to do.
In response to LordAndrew
LordAndrew wrote:
The ads really aren't that big of a deal. The game still loads while you watch them, and they only show up once every five minutes, so you probably won't even see them more than once a day. I've personally had them enabled the entire time throughout the pager beta. I also do not understand why we're discriminating towards BYOND for the ads; every other service out there plays ads before your Youtube videos, Flash games, etc. Once again though, it's okay if everyone else does it, but if BYOND does it then it is a crime.

In fact, the ads that BYOND serves are less an annoyance than most game networks/websites. We have OCCASIONAL thirty second advertisement; other game networks/websites have them every time you load a game, going anywhere from fifteen seconds to a minute. I personally prefer BYOND ads to any other site that has them, because at least here the money is actually going to helping each and every one of us, and not going into the pockets of some jerk that ad-packs a website with stolen flash games so (s)he can sit back and not help the users with more features.

EmpirezTeam wrote:
We already have quality games.

I would like to note that games jam-packed with ripped artwork (that also appear to be a reskined rip of DragonCrap Z games) aren't typically considered quality.
In response to Magicmann
Magicmann wrote:
EmpirezTeam wrote:
We already have quality games.

I would like to note that games jam-packed with ripped artwork (that also appear to be a reskined rip of DragonCrap Z games) aren't typically considered quality.

You must be new here.
I'm betting he was being sarcastic.
EmpirezTeam wrote:
Magicmann wrote:
EmpirezTeam wrote:
We already have quality games.

I would like to note that games jam-packed with ripped artwork (that also appear to be a reskined rip of DragonCrap Z games) aren't typically considered quality.

You must be new here.

FIREking wrote:
I'm betting he was being sarcastic.

So I'm not allowed to dislike the use of non-original art in what is claimed to be an original game..?

Wait a second... I've just now come to the conclusion that Empirez was the sarcastic one. Move along, nothing to see here.
It's amazing how much confusion I can cause with just 5 words.
Hehe.
Oh well. At least I haven't lost the game toda-. Damn it.
FIREking wrote:
Let's just make it very clear to a lot of people who don't spend a lot of time on the forum and aren't fully aware of the situation...

The ads are here to stay, and if they don't earn enough revenue, BYOND is being shut down indefinitely. If BYOND shuts down, that means no more BYOND games, no more live servers, no more master servers, no more key servers, no more passport checks, no more scoreboards, etc. etc.

Instead of complaining about the ads, try buying a membership to make them go away. Instead of whining about having to watch a 30 second ad while your game downloads, tell your friends about BYOND because the more people who come to visit, the more chances BYOND has of gaining new fans, developers, memberships.

If you are too young to understand; the world revolves around money, and nothing is free. The servers that BYOND runs on aren't free, the programmer who fixes the bugs and adds the feature isn't free, food isn't free, rent isn't free, web space isn't free. If you aren't willing to pay for these things, then sit back and watch those lovely ads who are keeping this alive for you.

This is actually a desperate act on behalf of the developers, and the more you moan and groan about the situation the more apt they are to just give up and leave this mess of a situation behind them.

So you decide!

What is wrong with you? I mean.. Seriously, how can you be so ignorant?
Do you know how many people donated to BYOND the last few days? Now this month has started and people already donated 559 dollars. They reached their 8k goal last month. You think they need millions of dollars to host a site? No, you do not need millions of dollars to run a site. The ads are unnecessary, and by the way, one of my friends bought Membership and still had ads. If they want money then they should actually try to update the program itself. Okay, sure, we got this new black byond, but it still has issues that have to be fixed. The ads are unnecessary. Now, I would be okay with VISUAL ads, but BYOND uses AUDIO ads. That is extremely idiotic. Am I supposed to stare at a black screen while I hear weird sounds? I heard a frikken baby nomming on something. You think that's enjoyable? There shouldn't be any audio at all. Unless they change that, there shouldn't even be ads.
I think your friend wants to raise a bug report about still having ads as a member, or check he's actually ticked off "show ads as member". The costs for BYOND are basically thus, in order of most expensive to least expensive:

Full time programmer
Part time project manager
Website Operation

The people working on BYOND need to earn a living on it, reasonably, to be able to do what they do. They have mortgages to cover, food to buy, bills to pay etc. That is the primary cost of BYOND, buying that development time.

As a for-instance, the entire amount they are looking to raise ($5k per month) is less than my salary, individually. There are two of them, and the server, domain yadda.
In response to SuperToby12
First off, I am not ignorant. Secondly, there is nothing wrong with me.

Everything the developers are doing is necessary to keep this going. Its not anyone's fault that you can't understand why.

No one likes ads, but they are necessary to pay for this. I don't think you realize how much it costs to run BYOND. Its not just about "running a site". There's much more to it than that. They have to pay someone a salary to actually work on the program itself, and this isn't free. A salary is the cost of living, food, covering bills, and much more. In america, this is at least 30k - 40k a year, which translates to at around four thousand dollars per month. The ads keep the actual hub, key server, and other things (that you don't see, as they handle a lot in the background) running.
I would watch 5 ads in a row if I could- I kind of wish it play'd off the pager instead though, like at the bottom.
In response to SuperToby12
SuperToby12 wrote:
I heard a frikken baby nomming on something. You think that's enjoyable?

Yes, babies nomming on things are cute and actually provide me with brief moments of smiling and happiness.
I hope it was breast.
In response to SuperToby12
Fireking is not being ignorant he's stating facts, i just made this account and intend to get a membership at the end of the week for it, people like you don't respect what byond has achieved and is still trying to.
The donations are to help byond as a website everything costs money and they devote their time to making byond better, you may say they need to do this and that to improve byond, it takes time and money, lets see you do what they have done if you think it's so each, you have such a lack of respect and obviously no common sense about how the world works.

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