What is happening to Homestuck? [An Explanation of Current Events] [the post tumblr user becomeimp put up today then immediately took down]
This was posted by tumblr user becomeimp, who then took it down seven hours later and has since deleted their account.
What is happening to Homestuck? [An Explanation of Current Events]
Alternate Title: Hiveswap is Dead
The past few months, the “Omegapause” if you will”, have been an odd time for Homestuck. For most, it has been quiet, or filled with Undertale.
But for the few of us who still follow the WP team and their endeavors,it has been… a bad time.
Below the cut is as much info as I could hunt down and archive.
TL;DR: The New York WP team have been laid off, Hiveswap is in a development schedule that is “similar to Half-Life 3″, and almost everyone involved in Homestuck has either disappeared from the internet, or laid off with a NDA preventing them from ever discussing Hiveswap again.
After Homestuck was put on pause in late July (a pause described as ending “sometime next year maybe” until the newspost was shortened a couple days later), the Hiveswap website went live. Around that same time, it was announced that WeLoveFine would be fully acquiring the Homestuck license, and that the WhatPumkin Store would be closing (whatpumpkin.com would now redirect to WeLoveFine). After closing the WP factory, it was announced that WhatPumpkin would be forever closing, the name being given to the company “What Pumpkin Studios”, an indie game developer located in New York. All employees and interns there were hand-picked by Hussie.
Various updates were made on a Developer Blog that launched with the website. A number of FAQs, dev bios, concept art, reblogs of fan art, etc. were present on the blog for some time, but have since been deleted.
In September, weird things began happening. Cohen aka @Skullmandible updated their twitter to claim they were the “new Head Writer of Hiveswap”. Which is odd considering that there was already a head writer and that most of the writing was done by Hussie almost 2 years ago, but never the less Cohen, even now, many months later, is still the writer. Which does give some hope that the project is not completely dead.
But the evidence against is shocking in number. As of the omegapause, Hussie’s twitter has been dead silent and his replies even less often than they were during the height of the gigapause. It was discovered sometime last month that he recently created a private twitter account by the name of “Guy Who Likes Horses” (@GWLHORS for short), which racked up over 1.1k tweets in only last few months, with the hundred tweets between 900-1000 taking place in a SINGLE DAY (for reference: Hussie’s normal twitter is just shy of 4k tweets in 7 YEARS. he tweeted almost 2 years worth of tweets in just a few months). As of the morning of 12/8, this account has been deleted.’
Even more so missing is Rachel Rocklin, the head of the late WP, the lead planner of Paradox Space, in charge of hiring artists for flash art and calandar/prints, and possibly Hussie’s lover. As of 12/6, Rachel has deleted her twitter (@owlsbuttley), her tumblr, and her PXS tumblr. Just a few days prior she had been active on all accounts,with ads to buy the new Homestuck calandar…she still has time for video games though
Going back to Hiveswap, recent information has been extremely bad.
On November 15, Jitenshaw (notable for their canon nsfw art and canon cosplay) posted a deviant art blog post stating she and her husband were no longer working on their current project. Here’s the important bits:
So, I’m sure some of my long term followers have noticed a change in me the past few months. There’s been a lot of shit going on that I’ve had to stay closed lipped about, but I’m done. I’m gonna talk lol, at least express enough without *hopefully* getting in trouble legally. If you don’t want to hear about my horrible woes, because I’m sure it’ll get ranty at some point, you can just scroll down and skip towards the awesome size-con news below
Before I start, please do not ask me any questions regarding the project I was on, period! I’m still contractually obligated to my NDA. My experience below will be about me and Sergio, because we both worked at the same studio. As some of you know, I’ve been working on a really amazing video game the past
year or so. Sergio started at the studio as an intern since he’s on his last year of school, but eventually got hired as a contract worker because he adapted and learned so quickly! Sergio wasn’t making as much as I was, but we hadn’t had a second income for years since Sergio decided to go back to school in 2013. This past Spring and Summer was wonderful for us. Not only did we get to work together…well in the same office at least lol…we were finally saving for once! Things were starting to really look up…I for once started envisioning my future
The rest is about her personal life and her upcoming vore-fetish convention.
The newest bit of info comes from Gomidog (Emily Compton), who made a vague series of tweets criticizing the development of an indie game later confirmed to be Hiveswap. They then followed that up with a tumblr post explanation. You can read it in full here
The TL;DR of that is that Hiveswap has had a bad development. The game you will end up playing (possibly soon or possibly 10 years from now) will not be like anything the previews promised. The development is compared to Duke Nukem Forever, TF2, and HALF LIFE 3.
The orignal versions of the tweets and tumblr post have since been deleted.
And that’s where we’re at. The remaining members of the team, notablyPukind and IPGD have been completely ignoring the situation to the public eye. Remember, everyone is under NDA, meaning there is very little they can say.
Let’s not freak out. Let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s let things play out and see what happens. I’m sure Hussie is doing his best to fix things.
Let’s just get the information out, so that hopefully Hussie will realize he has left the fandom in the dark and make a newspost soon with what info he can give us.
=> WhatPumpkin is no more
=> Hiveswap is barely being worked on or not at all
=> Everyone involved with Homestuck is either under NDA or has dropped off the face off the earth
If you see a link to a part 2 of this post below, then something serious has gone down.