SUNSETTING/SHUTDOWN OF FUTANARI PALACE-ALL MEMEBERS PLEASE READ

[dxasmodeus]

Members,


It is with great sadness and no small amount and disappointment that we are announcing that Futanari Palace will be closing down. The final day of operation for Futanari Palace will be 1 October 2027. To that end, this announcement will outline the sunsetting process for the forum.


The first part of the process is this announcement and the opportunity for members to archive stories, images, links, roleplaying logs, and other materiel on the forum. Members may do this on their own up until the final day of operation. Q and Swammy are considering means of archiving forum material. They will announce these options once they have been settled. In the meantime, I strongly suggest all members that wish to archive anything on the forum do so on their own. The second part of the process is the progressive shutdown of the forum. New registrations will be disabled next spring. The final month of the forum will have multiple announcements to inform members of the shutdown as a last call prior to the loss of data that will occur after the forum is deleted. Any archiving solutions decided upon by Q and Swammy that were not announced prior will be announced at that time. Finally, the forum will be deleted after the final shutdown date to comply with EU privacy laws.


Please note: No offers to purchase, take over or otherwise maintain Futanari Palace will be considered. Any and all said offers will be rejected without consideration or discussion.


Benchmark dates:


No date: Announcements from Q and Swammy regarding any archival methods.


1 April 2027 – New member registration will be disabled.


1 September 2027 – Final announcements and outline of shutdown process. Shutdown and depreciation of Patreon account will take place during this time. Direct all Patreon questions to Swammy.


1 October 2027 – Forum Shutdown and preparation for final deleting of server.


This decision was not made lightly and it is with heavy heart that it is being done. However, there are some major realities here at Futanari Palace that can no longer be ignored. The biggest reality is that the forum no longer has anywhere near the traffic to justify its continued presence on the net. For over twenty years, Futanari Palace with the place to go for anything and everything related to the futanari fetish. However, time and tide have taken its toll and the forum is no longer viable. This came to pass from the following causes:


1. Limitations of Forum Software
There are only so many things that forums can do. At its peak, Futanari Palace was a community, a library of futanari material, a game development site, and a gathering place for roleplayers. The community had tens of thousands of visitors a day for any and all of these purposes. However, as time and technology marched on, the limitations of forum software trying to do all of these things became very obvious. The storage needed for all of the comics, images, videos, and other material greatly bloated the site and created a financial burden. Likewise, the forum ran a heavily customized version of the core software that became unsustainable once its original webmaster left the community in 2013, creating a slow time bomb that would eventually cripple the forum in 2019 with the excessive spambotting. Even as this was going on, other websites easily eclipsed Futanari Palace’s position. E-Hentai/EX-Hentai (Sad Panda) became THE website for any and all erotica, regardless of fetish with its dedicated library software. The advent of Patreon and its competitors made it possible for individual artists to set themselves up without the need of a forum to act as a middleman community. F95Zone easily became the place for any and all videos, archives, and games not just for the futanari fetish, but most fetishes. Sadly, Futanari Palace fell behind and never took any action to recover its former position.


2. The Failed Import of 2020
In an effort to stop the spam problems in late 2019, where staff was literally banning HUNDREDS of bots daily, the decision was made to reboot the forum with new software with then-modern security measure to put it to a halt. At the time, the impression was that everything would and could be imported over with minimal or no losses. As the only surviving staff member from that time, I can say that we basically fucked up and found out wrong, but it was too late to fix anything. ALL of the attachments were lost. The library, all of the Second Life links, archives, movies, animated images...everything. The staff did its god-damndest to recover by re-importing no less than three times, a process that took weeks, yet to no avail. The new software and the old forum was not compatible with each other. The library, save for Dolfus’ tireless provision of game links for download, was a total loss. Links to stories, RPs, and other materials were busted. Some were recovered, most were not. The Second Life community left the forum en masse with this loss. The loss of the Second Life Community was not the only consequence of the 2020 debacle.


3. Sunsetting of ActionScript/Flash and its effect on the SlaveMaker Community
One of the biggest communities on the Palace was the Slavemaker community. Created as a side project by Poolka and taken over by Cmacleod, Slavemaker was a massive part of FP. If there were any game that could be said to encapsulate the spirit of FP, it was Slavemaker. However, Adobe phased out ActionScipt and Flash at the same time the failed import struck. Thus, any and all bugs from ActionScript could not be phased out. Web browsers would update to depreciate and reject running Flash without a third party player. On top of that, Cmacleod himself became extremely ill prior to the failed import, which essentially killed organized development. Once Cmac left and Adobe killed Flash, there was another major community that left the forum in droves.


4. Departure of Popular Content Creators and their fans.
While the exodus had begun slowly prior to the collapse of the Forum in 2020, popular authors and artists began leaving the Palace. When they left, their fanbases went with them. Some of these departures were due to creators aging out and moving on with their lives. Others left due to the forum import debacle. FP hemmoraged members during the first half of the decade due to its most popular creators simply leaving. With other means available, such as Patreon, SubscribeStar, Discord, and the ease of setting up one’s own community, FP became an antiquated middleman that technology made no longer necessary. Competing forums with larger, broader communities also had the member and financial base to do what FP could not; expand to meet demands.


5. COVID
I won’t get too much into this, but COVID fucked up everything. It happened at the WORST possible time; the botched import debacle. The one time FP needed to be stable was during COVID with everyone quarantined in their homes. FP wasn’t there because it was busted. Even more members were lost seeking life elsewhere as the Forum could not fulfill its function and purpose.


6. Age and the Passage of Time
Futanari Palace was established by Shenandoah and her cadre in 2006. Twenty years have passed since the forum first started and I joined in 2010. Futanari Palace’s purpose has always been creating a place where people that want to see futanari can find it. In the past two decades, Futanari, dickgirls, and even RL shemales have exploded in popularity and, quite frankly, have become mainstream. Futanari Palace’s original mandate and purpose have been fulfilled by providence of this development. Anyone can go to most sites and find what would be considered rare or niche back in the days of Windows XP and Vista when the Forum first opened. Speaking of age, the original wave of members has pretty much aged out of the community and moved on with their lives. Shenandoah passed the reigns to Echoen in 2013. Echoen did so two years ago in 2024 to Swammy. None of us are really that young anymore. I, myself, have been here for sixteen years. FP’s purpose has been fulfilled with the popularity and spread of futanari and the original guard that made it possible, there is no other way to say it, we got old and gray and we are feeling our age now. With all of the other issues present, the community has shrank to where there is not enough new members to replace all of us grayhairs.


The Forum, from top to bottom, is at the end of its life. We have tried desperately and in vain to keep things going. However, all of the issues I stated have piled up and the end-of-life for FP is here. There is no longer any denying it and what needs to be done, and what some would argue should have been done sooner is now taking place; sunsetting and shutting down the Forum.


I am unhappy to be the one to make this announcement and be one of the staff members to turn out the lights, but it is time. The only thing I can ask members to do is, in these final months, enjoy and celebrate what FP has and had to offer and how it changed the online community. I have been on staff since 2015 and to be honest, I am looking forward to my retirement. Please direct technical questions to Q and policy questions to Swammy regarding the sunsetting and final shutdown.


DX Asmodeus.