Karl.gg is being put into Maintenance Mode

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4 days ago

Simply put: it's time.

Time keeps flowing, the world keeps turning, and all good things must come to an end.

Maintenance Mode

Getting straight to the point. If you read nothing else of this blog post, this is the big take-away: Karl.gg is officially being shifted from "active development" to "maintenance mode". Arguably, we've been in a bit of an unofficial maintenance mode for a while already. The Karl.gg team had an hour-long call at the start of May, and agreed that it was time to make it official.

What does that mean?

Put into the simplest terms: we don't plan to implement any more new features (such as adding Perks for loadouts), don't intend to do many bugfixes (like fixing Advanced Statistics View), and we aren't going to commit to keeping the content up-to-date. If there's something absolutely critical, we'll probably address it; but for the most part the code repository will go dormant. However, we're going to continue paying the bills such that the website itself stays active. Thanks to generous donations from Arthiio0, GSG, other community members, and recurring ad revenue, we have enough in the bank account to maintain the current expenses for at least two more years - probably even longer!

So, all of your loadouts will still be available for the foreseeable future. The website shouldn't unexpectedly shut down any time soon, and we'll make sure to write another post like this with a few months' heads-up when the end finally comes.

Will we ever go back into Active Development?

At the time of writing, we don't anticipate that happening. But we don't know! Maybe some new content will drop that will really excite us, maybe we'll be inspired to add something new, or maybe some other folks will take over and start making changes. Who knows?

If you want to get in contact with us about this change, feel free to send a message on the DRG Community Tools Discord server.

The Story of Karl.gg

To celebrate the five years that Karl.gg has been a part of the DRG community, I wanted to indulge in some nostalgia and give a short history of the website.

The Beginning

The first version of Karl.gg was originally a solo project made by Surmiran called "Karl's Advanced Remote Loadout" (K.A.R.L.). He made the original Loadout Builder in JavaScript and CSS, and hosted it out of his GitHub repository. It gained some traction, and started getting used by the DRG community. A little while later, Getrolled/Rawrocopter had the idea to build a loadout sharing website for the community. Then, on May 6, 2020, their ideas collided. I was browsing the subreddit, saw that post and those comments, and offered my knowledge, help, and the use of the DPS Calculator to make it as accurate as possible. Shortly afterwards, Darthmaul joined the team.

Oh, the dreams we had back then. The game was new, the website was still an idea, and hopes were high. Just a short time later, on August 12, 2020, Karl.gg launched. Immediately, we knew we had something special. The DRG community embraced the site, starting using it, and gave lots of feedback. In short order, we started adding more features: Pickaxes, Grenades, loadout searches, comments on loadouts, even blog posts!

At the start, we had a lot of motivation and time. We were all into DRG, locked in our homes due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, and had lots of creative energy to spend. I was unemployed, which gave me an excessive amount of time to develop the DPS Calculator and research all of the facets of DRG's weapons.

The Middle

The Present

We've all changed; developed other interests. We're no longer cooped up due to the Pandemic. We've all gotten new jobs, and some of us have kids to take care of now, too.

Acknowledgements

Although Karl.gg is primarily the work of four people, there have been dozens of people who have helped make this website as great as it is. Between people helping to point out when something was incorrect or submitting bug reports, our community has been a huge part of why we have such high-quality content. There's no way that I'll be able to remember and mention all of them, but here are some of the people that stand out:

Helped to Improve Karl.gg's Content

(alphabetical)

  • Dagadegatto
  • Elythnwaen
  • Evan
  • GreyHound
  • Lammybs/Fabricio
  • LazyMaybe
  • Lunari
  • Riku
  • SplitSentro
  • TriggerHappyBro

Friends of the Site

(alphabetical)

  • ArcticEcho
  • Arthiio0
  • Asher
  • BongoSkaggs
  • Drilccino
  • Drillboy Jenkins
  • Drilling in the Name of
  • Ike
  • LoneXG
  • LucentGlow
  • mbaker5114
  • MeatMorning
  • Milligin
  • That Goddamn Scout
  • USteppin
  • Waste
  • Zambohni