angel hat on i just need to compile a list of my thoughts on the fall of such a beloved friend. just wanted to add that i'm writing this to try and combat some of the spread of misinfo and promote critical analysis of the situation. discourse is much appreciated but we need to love each other still mwah mwah

TL;DR. 11 artfight staff (admins and mods) stepped down on july 22nd. airr and beefsen got promoted to new admins and taka made an announcement about how artfight isn't going to end early. the staff collectively stepped down with no confirmed reason and haven't released an official statement yet. there is no real estimate for either how much money artfight makes,nor how much it takes to run the site, but it's likely that takaia (the owner of the site, has a history of being incredibly inactive) was pocketing donations and lying about them all going towards the site. the mods are not asking to be paid, and have said so numerous times.

1. i see this as a sad but necessary day. i am friends with mods and i know how much the team has been strangled by mismanagement; it was truly painful to hear them continuously suffer, so this feels like a sigh of relief but at the same time, above all else, this is a sad day, not a surprising one. one of the things that hurts me the most is the way people are treating it like drama. this is not drama. this is a team of dedicated people who have been lied to for years. this is a beloved event falling to pieces because of greed. if you are someone who is posting about this on social media like it is drama, i do not condone your actions whatsoever. please rethink your decision and wait until the former staff releases anything or the situation becomes clearer. there is simply not enough information to have a take on this.

2. websites take money to run. artfight made more than enough money to run their website. hiring a fulltime dev was probably not possible in their budget. these three statements can coexist at once. i am a mechanical engineering undergraduate but my family works in CS and from my educated perspective i think that the best thing for them to do would be to hire multiple part-time devs for a couple months, instead of one fulltime. pika has apparently refused compensation (secondary sources, not from pika herself), and works another job, so we should respect that. the site architecture is not able to support exponential growth. this means that the entire site, or at least the backend, will need to be re-written, which is time consuming and would be expensive. even if all of the donations went "to the site" it would not simply be enough to upgrade the servers.

3. trying to jump ship because of morals is kind of useless. most likely, all of the issues are stemming from one person (taka). the rest of the team is very dilligent and hard working. by using the site and supporting the event still, you're keeping the community alive, which is the most important thing. featured character is not like artfight. CAEs are not like artfight. ToyHouse minigames are not like artfight. hang out in any side servers you like, but there is no replacement event this size with this kind of gameplay, and no one's saying you need to boycott the game anyway!

5. four is way too much bad luck to add to this so here's point 5 instead. it's ok to be scared. it's ok to not know what's going on. i will tell you a secret. even us who are close to people on staff know that everyone is in the dark right now. even staff members are in tumult. just don't use those feelings to spread misinfo. be kind to each other, support the spirit of artfight ^_^

love you all. i'm gonna keep playing the game and my best wishes go out to everyone who's having a hard time rn. feel free 2 hmu if you need someone to talk to.