In a few months, World of Goo and GooFans will celebrate their 15th birthdays. It's a testament to the innovative gameplay and compelling storytelling that there are people playing the game today who weren't alive when it was first written.

The popularity of this site has inevitably declined as time has passed and it is now long past time to say farewell. As many will have noticed, the amount of spam has skyrocketed recently, on top of which there are many known bugs and flaws in the version of software the site is based on. Updating it realistically means rewriting it from scratch, an immense amount of work that isn't justified by the number of people still using the site.

Those wishing to continue to chat and share content can join the community on the GooFans Discord.

The Sunset Process

GooFans.com won't go away, but it will be made read-only and preserved for posterity. This will happen in five phases:

1. New user signups have now been disabled. This will prevent new spam bots signing up.

2. All unpublished content (including addins) will be deleted, and then users who have no content will be deleted. This is because spam bots are often created months or years before they are used, so there are thousands more potential sources of spam lurking until these inactive users are deleted. This will happen over the next few weeks, at which point only established users will be able to continue to post, upload new addins or update existing addins.

3. The site will continue like this, with posting open only for existing users, for a few months - probably until shortly after World of Goo's birthday in October. This will be an opportunity for the moderators and I to clean up any remaining spam before it is preserved for eternity.

4. In November, the site will be put fully read-only. Nobody will be able to post, all accounts except moderators will be locked. This phase will last only a few days and is the last chance to delete any remaining spam. The API will be disabled, meaning the leaderboards and all online functionality of GooTool will stop working. All features and menu items that make the site seem interactive will be disabled prior to it being archived.

5. Finally, the site will be copied and turned into a static HTML website. No posting or editing of any kind will be possible.

Deletion Requests

Any requests for content to be deleted must be received before October in order to be processed. Nothing will be able to be changed once the site has been made static.

Fare-thee-well

It's been a lot of fun seeing how the game has continued to evolve years beyond its release with the innovation shown by generations of addin designers and such an amazing community. The last of the Goo Balls could never have known how much more was in store!

-davidc