Major Update & Main Site is Live!

grotlover2 · October 11, 2026, 7:48am

[Here is an update video for anyone who might prefer that. I threw it together really quick so sorry that is is a bit rough]

tldr:

WeightGaming is still facing some major hurdles
1. Money - My work is still rough with another layoff in July and the main site going live will only further stretch our limited finances.
2. Regulations - Anti NSFW regulations keep getting passed and are getting harsher. Some are now focusing on more then just NSFW content and trying to age gate user to user interaction which makes running the fourms more risky and expensive.
3. Burnout - I need to start taking my burnout seriously and being honest about what is bothering me, otherwise I may just crash and burn.
Plans to address these issues
- I am stepping away from day to day moderation and leaving it in the capable hands of our mod team, to help with my burnout and focus on the more pressing issues facing WG.
- Jams are on an indefinite hiatus and not likely to return any time soon. Evaluating some ideas on helping promote community jams to help fill the void though.
- WG is transitioning from support to game development. I am hoping this will not only help me with my burnout, but also give us something more tangible to encourage support through our patreon.
  - Also going to try to use this to start showing some love back our youtube channel.
After 8 years an initial alpha of the main site is now live!
- Should be available at weightgaming.com. DNS settings can take a bit to propagate though so some people may still get redirected to fourms.weightgaming.com.
- Since it can not be run full open who can get onto the main site is being restricted to invite only.
- The current group of devs will be on-boarded over about 2-3 months in groups of ~5.
- Unlike the forums, we will not be allowing games that use AIGC to be posted to the main site.
- The first 4 weeks will be dedicated to @BloatedGoyle and their work. Special thanks to their partner Lexal and @Hoodah for helping with the memorial/preservation project.

Intro

Its been a bit, but I finally have an update to share with you all! I would like to apologize for taking so long, but I have been head down on the main site for almost the entire year. Its rough but I also posted a vlog on our youtube channel for anyone who would prefer to listen to the update instead of trying to read through my walls of text.

In this update we are going through 3 things:

What are the problems WG is facing
How I am going to be trying to address those problems
An update on the Main Site!

So, with that out the way, lets get into it!

What are the issues facing WG?

First, what are the major issues facing Weight Gaming? I am going to try to not get into too much detail or get too rambly, since I already did in previous updates, but generally speaking there are 3. Money, Regulations, and Burnout.

Money

On the money front, the issue is it is expensive to run a site like this and it’s even harder to fund them anymore. Hell, the owner of FA, Sciggles, was talking about how much FA is struggling financially and how they are having trouble making enough cash just to keep the lights on. A big reason for this they revealed in their official announcement about it is how expensive it is to run FA, and the fun fact that ad rev has fallen through the floor if you have adult or even mature content on your site.

I know this might be an odd tangent (considering I am talking about Weight Gamings problems), but if you use FA at all I would encourage you to go support them if you can, either through their FA+ or just sending some cash Sciggles way.

Back to Weight Gaming though, currently it takes about $12-13 grand a year just to keep the lights on for us, and that is only going up especially when you add in the additional $4-6 grand/year the main site will require. Also, outside of 1 or 2 years we have never made enough cash to fully cover our operating costs which means I have had to pay the shortfall right out of my pocket almost every year.

I was fine with this for the longest time because I lived in a state with a low cost of living and made a good salary which allowed me to support both Weight Gaming and my wife Kira as long as I budgeted for it. But with the cost of living blowing up faster than Kira’s waistline; my budget keeps getting tighter and tighter every year.

The biggest nail in that coffin though is how unstable my job is at the moment. We have been having 1 to 2 layoffs a year since we were acquired by a private equity firm, with the most recent happening just back in July. And while I have been lucky enough to dodge them all so far, you never know when your number is going to come up. Along with all that it’s no secret that the guys that own us are getting pissed that they haven’t been able to sell us yet so a lot of us feel it’s a matter of time before they just scrap us for parts.

On top of that the job market for software devs is really rough right now, and if I was to get laid off or the company I work for was to collapse I have no idea how long it may take me to find another job. I do have some friends in town that can get me work at some of the local shops here, but to even be considered I would have to cut my current pay in half which would blow my budget completely out of the water.

The fact of the matter is it’s getting harder and harder for me to justify paying for what is effectively a second full time job, and if I was to lose my current job that is going to force me into making some hard decisions. Luckily thanks to everyone’s generosity and some generous donations from a few individual community members I’ve got some runway for if the worse was to happen. But if it comes down to me having to choose Weight Gaming or keeping Kira fat and happy, well I think everyone knows the option I would choose.

Regulations

On the regulations front, it’s been no secret that crackdowns on NSFW content from both business and governments have been getting more and more severe. This makes sites like Weight Gaming who are not afraid to host that content more and more important, but it also makes being able to do so more and more expensive and risky.

Hell, textadventures.co.uk is removing all NSFW games off their site in November, itch.io and steam both caved to payment processors last year with steam still continuing crackdowns mainly against indie games, and going back to FA they said they make less than $150 a month on 3rd party ads because of the demands of their advertising partners around what they consider “adult” content (apparently just being fat is also considered adult to a lot of advertisers).

The worse part though is a lot of the regulations I am seeing are going beyond just NSFW. Many laws are focusing on any situation where a minor could be iterating with an adult. A recent law passed in Australia automatically classifies any game where users could interact with each other as R18. I mean can you imagine a Hello Kitty game being rated R18 just because it has text chat?

This is particularly concerning for things like forums which are nothing but user interactions. Some of the more extreme laws I have seen proposed almost require us to turn into a pseudo police state with requirements to monitor all user interactions (both private and public) 24/7. Which for a site like ours, which is just me and a handful of volunteers, is not only impossible for us to comply with but is frankly something I would never want us to do in the first place.

If a bad enough version of these laws passed on the federal level in the US I would be forced to at least put the forums in read only mode if not outright shut them down. So far we have been lucky, but if this keeps up it could turn into a matter of when and not if.

Burnout

Finally, we get into burnout. The stress of running a community like this is really immense. It has resulted in two ER visits for me back in 21 and 22 (which put quite the dent into my savings as well), and especially between mid 2023 through most of 2025 I was almost on the site 24/7 (even while I was working) just trying to keep things under control. Honestly, I don’t remember the last time I didn’t dread opening up the forums and just got to browse it casually.

The thing is, I don’t want to be playing cop at the end of the day or get messages during work with people pissed that I didn’t respond to their message fast enough. I think a lot of people forget that before I took over in 2018 I was just another dev with Kira. We were working on our own project which I shelved in order to take over when Kilif was considering shutting it all down. And I did so because I didn’t want to see another fetish game dev community disappear into the ether.

Also, as much as I loved hosting the Jams there was only one or two where there wasn’t some sort of fire around it. What caused the most burnout though was when people were complaining about things like the “hands off theme” because they thought it would lead to less submissions, or the ones telling me I was not running the jam the way they wanted it to be run. And It really got under my skin because it was so blatantly obvious that these people didn’t see the Jam as a “Jam,” but just as a way to get more games.

Look, I hate talking about this stuff because I just feel like I am complaining, but I have to be honest about this. There have been a few times I have gotten close to hitting my limit and at the end of the day if I burn out then all the money in the world wouldn’t matter.

How am I going to try to address all this?

Stepping back from day to day moderation

Well first I am going to be trying to take a step back from the day to day moderation on the site. It’s less of a question of if I want to at this point, and more of a need to. Having to play cop as much as I had, not only ate up a ton of my time and really stressed me out, but also affected my day job which I can’t afford to allow anymore. This also means I am going to be handing over more power and authority to our moderation team so they will be able to handle things on the forums and wiki as they see fit.

Unfortunately, we did take some hits on that front, particularly with the disappearance of our head mod @Krodmandoon around July 4th. But, @Pork_Soda has done a great job filling in for them and @Skinny_Guy has been doing a good job at keeping an eye on things and dealing with fights as they break out.

I do wish we had a few more mods but I have been assured by everyone that they are comfortable with their current workload, and I feel better about it with both @SirKata and @HeftyTotem volunteering to also help us out as they both have time.

Fortunately, being able to step back like this has already helped me quite a bit. I have really been able to focus down the main site this year, and being able to fully step away will not only will give me some time to actually cuddle with Kira, but will allow me to focus more on the larger issues facing WG like how to ensure I can keep running everything in a sustainable manner.

Gain Jams are on indefinite hiatus

Next, Game Jams are on indefinite hiatus. I am really sorry to everyone who really enjoyed them, but they just kept getting more and more out of control almost every year and they just take too much out of me anymore.

As I mentioned above, out of the 7 jams we ran, only 2 didn’t have something catch fire in the background or the foreground. Also, the sadder fact is this is also a case of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch.

Every jam it just felt like more and more people were trying to get us to twist it into something for squeezing content out of the devs or for them to make the games that specific person wanted; instead of it being a fun, low stakes community event. And because of all that it has just left me with a bad taste in my mouth over the whole thing.

I do feel really bad over it though. I know a ton of devs that loved the Jams and looked forward to them every year and I feel like I am letting them down, but this alone has really pushed me close to my limit a few times.

That all being said, I am considering some ways to possibly promote or at least make other community lead jams more visible to everyone to help fill the void. I know us helping out the Get Large jam last year worked out fairly well, and it was fun getting to actually fully participate in a Jam for once myself.

I am still thinking over the possible options though and not sure what I am going to do yet.

Pivoting to game development

Finally, the last thing I am going to be doing is a bit of a pivot with Weight Gaming. We will be moving away from just being here for other devs to use, and more towards developing games ourselves. This may sound a bit odd, but like the good little engineer I am, this is a solution that solves multiple problems.

It helps ALOT with my burnout as I am happiest when I am making things.
By developing games we can provide more tangible rewards to encourage a larger group of people to support the site through our patreon, especially since we are going to be more reliant on it, instead of having to constantly make posts complaining about money in order to keep interest up (which will be nice since I personally hate doing that).

Along with that I am hoping this new focus on developing games will allow me to get back into doing things like devlogs or tutorials/how-tos on our youtube channel. I am also considering doing dev streams as well once I am more set up. I think trying to do some stuff like that would not only be a fun way to pull the curtains back a bit on how games are developed but also as a chance to reconnect with the community.

I plan on making another announcement/video going into more detail about this near the end of this year/early next after I got everyone migrated to the main site, which brings me to our final topic…

THE MAIN SITE IS DONEish!

That’s right! After 8 years and 3 (maybe 4) attempts, the first release of the main site is finally done and should already be live! The thing is, it is not in the same form that I was originally aiming for since the ground shifted so much from under me while I have been working on it.

Originally the idea was to make it an open platform for all. Like a fetish friendly version of Itch.io. But due to changing regulations, rising hosting costs, and the fact my idea for how to fund the entire thing is dead in the water due to a ToS change, I had to pivot it to something more like early Steam.

Now that may sound weird if you are thinking of more modern Steam, but what I am talking about is before they even had greenlight.

See, Steam used to be a very closed platform and it was very hard to get a game on it, and that is about how I am going to have to run the main site to some extent. Basically, instead of it being a full replacement for the projects section on the forums, it’s really becoming a more restricted version of the old curated projects section.

This more constrained focus has already helped me out a ton so far though. I have been able to drop some features that were acting as road blocks or really complicating the system, but would have been required for a more open platform. And since I am moving us more towards our own development I have been focusing more on features I know I will need which has helped me really constrain the scope into something more manageable for one person.

This has also started to morph the way I am going to have to run the main site. The new structure is closer to something more like a co-op instead of a more traditional store front, which I am interested in seeing how that will turn out.

So if I am going to be picking and choosing who has permission to post to the main site, you are probably wondering how I will be doing that?

Well, I won’t lie, it will largely be a subjective call on if I feel the dev or their team are going to be a good fit for the main site. That being said I do have 5 things I tend to look at (in no specific order) when deciding if someone will be a good fit or not:

Quality, Technical Skill, and Novelty - Has the dev shown to produce high quality or novel work or has demonstrated the technical skill to make games in genres that are not seen often
Reliability - Has the dev shown the ability to produce finished projects or reliably update projects that are in development
Relationship with the Dev - Do we have a good relationship with the dev and/or their team
Preservation - Does the dev have any projects that have had a major impact on the community that makes it worthy of preservation directly on the main site
Popularity - Does the dev have projects that are really popular in the community and would it be better served with a dedicated spot on the main site instead of just a forum post

I know this may sound unfair to some people, but unfortunately it’s just the way I have been forced to run things. Having tighter control over who gets on to the site makes it a lot safer if some law comes up that could royally screw us over. Also, it allows me to keep tighter control over our hosting costs so the site doesn’t collapse under its own weight.

I would also like to do something a bit more community driven in the future, almost kind of like steam green light, but I need to get things stable first before I can even consider it. Until then though the forums will remain open to everyone for as long as I can support it.

That all being said, just because I am allowing a dev access to the main site doesn’t mean they get to post anything they want and new projects will still have to go through a light review before being allowed to publish.

Generally speaking this will be a similar review process we are already doing for projects, but with one big difference. Projects with AI Generated Content will not be allowed to be posted to the main site.

I know, I know, that may seem like a 180 from what I have been saying when it comes down to the forums and how I don’t want to force my own opinions on others. But since the main site has turned more into a curated catalog of projects, and not something that is meant for general community use like the forums are, I feel more justified in imposing what I feel are reasonable restrictions to ensure that level of quality.

In addition to my own personal disdain for the rampant abuse of AIGC, I just dont feel that AIGC gets anywhere near the quality that more traditional hand made content has, especially when it comes to fetish content.

As a general rule of thumb, if a project contains any content that was generated via a prompt it’s going to be a no-go for the main site.

So with that all out the way and the main site up, how is all of this going to work? Well, I have already contacted most of the devs I plan on bringing on in the first round. I am going to be bringing them on in two week increments in groups of about 5. This is to help me spread out the load, better address bugs, and see how the site is performing under load before I open it up too far. By my rough estimates this should take about 2-3 months and should be finished up in December or January.

Now, the more keen eyed of you all may have noticed these numbers don’t make sense if I just brought the main site up. If I started onboarding devs today, it should be between November to December. And that’s a good observation which brings me to the last and most important thing I want to bring up.

The onboarding of devs is going to be delayed by about 4 weeks. This is because I wanted to dedicate the first month of the main site’s operation to the memory of a dev in our community that passed away in 2023, @BloatedGoyle.

You may know him better from his games like Smasher’s and Coinpurse Kobold. For those of you who may not know, Creature passed away suddenly in the early summer of 2023 due to a heart defect that ran in his family.

As you can imagine, this hit a lot of people in the community hard, myself included. I wanted to do something to honor their memory and thank them for everything they have given to this community over the years. So, I reached out to his old partner Lexal to see if he would be ok with us preserving his work.

Not only did he agree, but he offered to help us track down some unreleased prototypes to ensure they were preserved as well. Thanks to Lex’s help we were not only able to preserve the 5 games we were aware of but also 5 unreleased proof of concepts and prototypes that were floating around in a few private servers and chats!

On top of all that @Hoodah was nice enough to make a wonderful memorial banner for us. With the help of both of them I think it came out really well, and I am very happy and excited to finally get to share it with you all! I hope everything we did will do a lot to honor his memory and all that he has given to this community.

Final thoughts

Well, I think that is about it. I hope everyone will enjoy the main site now that it is finally out. If you spot any bugs or issues with it I have set up a Site Info > Main Site Bug Reports section so I ask that you post it there.

Also I wanted to give everyone who has supported me and Weight Gaming this year a big thank you! As I mentioned above, expect to see another video/post with more details on my plans for us switching to game dev and the changes that will be happening to patreon to support that once I get the migration a bit more sorted out.