April 2025 Staff Update

Hello, Unvale community! In response to some really helpful feedback, we’re going to be trying these new updates to keep y’all informed on what’s happening with our platform and team. If you enjoy these posts, let us know so we’ll know to keep doing them!

Alright, I know you’re eager to hear what’s happening behind the scenes, so let’s get started.

Platform updates

• Major stability improvements almost complete - If you’ve been on Unvale awhile, you know that our site has had a variety of stability issues over the years, with especially bad issues starting about a year ago. (Remember that time y’all favorited so much you brought the site down?! 💀) Our development team has been tirelessly working to address these issues since last year, and now their work is nearly complete. Once finished, we expect almost no unplanned outages, way fewer instances of QOTD or comments not working, and a lot more time for our developers to focus on adding new site features. I know this project isn’t particularly exciting, but I can assure you it will make a world of difference, and it’ll ensure our platform is able to scale in the years to come! No more hugs of death– or at least, for a good while. (THIS IS NOT A CHALLENGE! /j)
• Fixing slow page loads - Another focus of our engineering team right now is improving the code for our Explore page and search functionality. Their work here will help with ultra-slow load times, and it’ll also allow us to expand search functionality in the future. (I know everyone wants to be able to look up folks by username or to search things like writing or worlds. We’re getting there!) I don’t have any dates yet, but I’d hope some of this work is complete this summer.
• Helping new users get started on Unvale - While we wait for some of these bigger performance improvements to wrap up, one of our engineers is working to improve the new user experience on Unvale. Right now, a good chunk of folks are getting confused on how to get started on the platform, whether it’s meeting other users or sharing their creations for the first time. These will be smaller platform improvements, but we’re hoping they’ll pack a big punch! One of them should come out this month, and I think new and existing users alike are really going to enjoy it. Stay tuned! (Hint: randomize!)
• Adding momentum to bug fixes - Now that we have a larger, more organized engineering team, we finally have the space to look more into bugs, figure out what’s broken, and roll out fixes. We recently fixed issues with OC page descriptions not saving, comments acting strange, and text breaking in weird ways. We have no plans of slowing down here, so I hope more fixes are just around the corner! If there’s a particular bug that is really bothering you, it doesn’t hurt to make sure it’s on our team’s radar.

Other updates

• Our team is growing - One of our team members commissioned an adorable art piece of us all from the ever-talented bsodas. Check it out below! We’re up to 8 team members now, and that’s not counting all of our amazing site helpers, from moderators to social media managers! Thanks to everyone who help makes Unvale great. 💖

• Bears for the team - To celebrate our awesome team and recent Unvale anniversary, Unvale team members each got their own Build-a-Bear with a custom Unvale t-shirt. SO SOFT! Let me know if y’all would ever want your own Unvale plush someday.

• Supporting up-and-coming YouTube creators - You’ve likely seen us partner with some larger YouTube creators to try and get the word out about Unvale, but we also love to work with smaller creators as well! I hope you’ll see Unvale around YouTube more in the coming months— oh, and if you have a smaller YouTube creator that you absolutely love, let us know! Here’s an example of a really awesome sponsor we’ve recently worked with.

• Unvale at GDC - Unvale went to GDC last month, the Game Developer’s Conference in California. We met many interesting folks and spoke to a lot of indie game developers about Unvale. We know many of our users are adding their original video game characters to the platform already, and we’re excited to think about how we can make Unvale even better for folks wanting to create their own indie game. Let me know if you have ideas!

Thanks for reading this update! Let me know what y’all think of it. (If you need help figuring out how to get ahold of our team, check out this article.) And, lastly, don’t forget to check out our current Glitch in the Multiverse event happening on the platform right now.

You’ll hear from me again next month! Ta ta for now.

Bri