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Ammit · Jul 31, 2025 1:43 AM

This is never something I never intended to have to do but sadly has become needed.

I am working on getting google ads up and running for our site. Only accounts who have not made a purchase in the past 30 days will see these ads.

We have members who have played the game for 1, 5, even 10 plus years and never paid a cent to support the site. While that is fine in isolation, I hope people understand that every free member costs us money when they use the game. Every page load, every image generation has an associated cost. This drives down our income, and drives up prices for other players.

The addition of ads on unpaid accounts means those server costs can be covered and not have to be born by my family or by paying players. I will always be happy to have members who chose not to or can not pay for the game. These members are still appreciated and welcome parts of the community, we just sadly can't afford to support them on our own dime anymore.

I will work to make sure the ads are relatively unobtrusive, and hope people will be understanding about this change.

Having another member buy something for your account counts for a recent purchase. Purchasing something for another player does not. If the heart next to your name is solid it means you are a recent game supporter, and will not see any ads. If the heart is white, or there is no heart at all you will start to see ads soon.

I am expecting ads to start running some point in August.

MissKitty · Jul 31, 2025 9:43 AM

Totally understandable! Thank you for the heads up.

RKOHaven · Jul 31, 2025 6:17 PM

Very understandable, I am just happy that this game has stayed around for so long. I love this game.

RamshornRanch · Aug 1, 2025 2:40 PM

I like that those of us who pay will not see the ads. Thank you!

Ammit · Aug 2, 2025 10:30 PM

Just a heads up for everyone, the process of getting the ad system approved is rather awkward. It can take days, it can take weeks. We have to add the code to enable ads so we can get approved but we can't set up the proper controls until the ads are approved. All that means ads might suddenly appear, and they might appear in crazy places or to everyone, or too many. Once I have the ability to, I will make sure things are set up properly.

Ammit · Sep 5, 2025 8:23 PM

Update on this: We have made a lot of progress on this and have settled on working with a company called Playwire instead of Google Ads directly. We are deep into the set up process with them and are expecting to have ads working soon.

Ammit · Sep 25, 2025 11:46 PM

We have a final launch date for ads. Ads will start appearing in the game on Monday Sept. 29th.

If you have made a purchase to help support the game in the past 30 days you will not see any ads. That includes subscriptions.

The ads are going to be more intrusive than I had hoped, but the reality is that covering the server costs will require that. You will be seeing ads that stick to the bottom of your screen and scroll with you. There will be ads that appear to the left or right of the main game body.

There also will be video ads that appear in the lower right of the screen. I am least happy about these. Thankfully they load in muted and they can be closed to make them go away. Look it sucks to have to have these but talking to our ad services team they tell us that the video ads can make up over half the ad revenue. We kind of have to have them to make this all work. I don't like, it I don't want it, but I also need to keep the game in the black or we won't be having a game.

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You should not be seeing popup/full page covering ads. This is something they offer and was turned on in testing initially. I told them absolutely not. If you see any thing like that please take a screenshot and let me know. It is not acceptable to me to have that kind of ad on our game.

They also where trying out ads that go in-between the white boxes that make up the main body of the horse page. These also are not supposed to be there. If you see them please let me know.

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There is going to be a breaking in process where we find the balance between having enough ad coverage to cover server costs but not so much as to be off putting. If something is not working just leave us a polite note letting us know what the issue is and we will work with the Playwire team to fix it.

Ammit · Sep 26, 2025 12:24 AM

Also just wanted to include a word on ad blockers. To start we won't be including any "Please disable your ad blocker" type messaging. Getting these ads up is going to be a bit of a messy process, so I think it is only fair to allow some flexibility.

Once we have everything dialed in we will be including one of those messages. It will be one of the "continue without disabling" types though, not a hard lock out of the site.

Ammit · Sep 29, 2025 5:00 AM

Ads are now live on all servers. We will be working in the future with Playwire to see if we can improve the aesthetics as they are rather rough right now, but we need to get things started before we can make any of those changes.

Arayla · Oct 6, 2025 6:33 PM

Hi! I have an active upgrade so haven’t been seeing any of the ads while logged in which I really appreciate!

I have noticed that when logging into my account from my iPhone that ads are popping up (before logging in so makes sense) but I have had a few that are very strangely placed/floating and can make it tricky to log in.

Popping this here for you now but I will grab a screenshot next time it happens to link!

Just want to add This is 100% not a complaint about the ads. I understand their necessity and I’m thankful for the grace given to members that support the game!

Ammit · Oct 6, 2025 9:25 PM

That is odd as there are no ads on the log in page. Thanks for the info!

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