I’m assuming this is in the scope of this community since Newgrounds was founded almost 30 years ago, tho I did notice posts here focus more on the small we than on bigger websites, so sorry if this post is perceived as inappropriate.
Newgrounds is a site for posting art, animations and games where I’ve had an account for a few years and I quite enjoy it. Since last year it’s been becoming more pressing about asking for donations and morphing into a kind of “premium” model, where only donators get access to some stuff. I’m feeling a bit conflicted because I tend to shun sites with this model, but I also kinda understand that it might be necessary since hosting all that content probably costs a lot. But then again, it must have been costing a lot for a long time, and this comes up surrisingly close in time to the enshittification of Twitter and Reddit. Does anyone have any thoughts? Or maybe some more background knowledge about why Newgrounds has been making these decisions now in particular?
Doesn’t Tom Fulp still own it? As far as I know he’s pretty open about things and generally approachable. Might be worth sending him a message on Twitter/X/Whatever social media site, assuming there isn’t already a blog post or forum thread where he talks about the changes.
I’d imagine that the site is having funding from ads dry up over time now that flash is dead and they get less traffic. I’m impressed that it’s still around.
It might be blind nostalgia, but Fulp is one of the few admins I would trust not to go to the dark side, so to speak. Then again, m00t sold 4chan, which I never could have imagined.