Update time! New supporter perks, a new giveaway, and an update on James

All,

It's been a good while since our last update, and as we approach the 3,000 account milestone on SFF Forum we've found ourselves ready to share some announcements with the community. So, let's get to it!

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First off, I'd like to introduce some enhancements to our supporter subscriptions. We recently introduced the SFF Swag Store in response to requests from the community to sell SFF-related gear on an ongoing basis. Given this, we're excited to make the Store even better for our Bronze/Silver/Gold supporters, by providing an unlimited 10%/15%/25% discount to each tier (respectively) on all Teespring purchases! This discount will apply not only for existing items on offer, but also on all future items we sell through the Swag Store. Supporters can expect a post in the coming days showing how these discounts can be used.

In addition, for those Gold supporters who already use our IRC and Minecraft servers, you'll be pleased to know that we've made some hardware upgrades that have improved performance and will enable us to host additional content in the future. In the short term, this allows for more concurrent users on Minecraft, but we're excited to see what else we can do with the increased muscle of our dedicated hardware.

We have future enhancements yet to come for the supporter tiers, so there's much to look forward to yet. Until then, I'd encourage everyone to learn more about our supporter tiers on the updated details page here - now more than ever, we've been working to provide a lot of value through these supporter statuses. Furthermore, this financial revenue stream has become critical for us as our community continues to scale, and as we press for more in-depth reporting and reviews on SFF Network. Every supporter subscription helps, and we really appreciate everyone who enables us to further our work!

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For our second update, and in recognition of our aforementioned 3k member milestone, I'm excited to announce a brand new giveaway! Much like we've done in the past with coolers and the like, we've got some hardware that is in need of a new home. This time around we have a shiny new motherboard, however - the ASRock Fatal1ty X370-Gaming ITX/AC!



You can check out John's review of this board - alongside Gigabyte's AB350 Gaming-ITX/AC - right here.

In addition, we have some packages of swag to give out that the SFFN team picked up while at Computex 2017, making this perhaps the largest giveaway we've done to date! We'll have a thread up soon that details all of this - and how you can enter to win both the motherboard and the swag packages - so be sure to monitor the home page for that.

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Lastly, I wanted to give the community an update regarding James (@Aibohphobia). A while ago, James let us know that he needed to take some time away from his day-to-day work with Minutiae, in order to put his attention towards some health issues he's encountered. We've been entirely supportive of him taking this time for himself, and have consequently been putting most of our own efforts into backfilling his responsibilities.

To be honest, that process of filling in for him remains ongoing - simply put, James has done a lot to support Minutiae's operations, all while consistently remaining one of the most engaged community members on the forum. He's got some big shoes to fill. Furthermore, we aren't yet sure when James will be back and fully active around here, though we remain in contact and have respected his privacy during this time.

During James's absence, we will be doing a few things differently. Most of these will be operational concerns that take place behind the scenes, but the primary item of note is that we will be putting Low Volume on hiatus. We can't imagine Low Volume without him, and while we may do other podcast-y things in the interim, they won't fall under the Low Volume banner. Once James is back in action, we will resume the show on the same cadence as before.

I'll make sure to keep you all posted as to James's status, but know that we've been missing him a lot - there are many people in this community that are stewards of our hobby, but James stands out as one of the most impactful. I have a lot of respect and admiration for his contributions, and of himself as a person; I know many of you all do as well.

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This is a lot to share, but know that we have more to come in the last quarter of the year, from content on SFF Network to updates meant for the community. It's been a bit of a whirlwind for us lately, but I am genuinely proud of the continued growth of our community, and of the fantastic work that John and the editorial team have been publishing. I cannot wait for what the coming months will bring.


Best,

Joshua