When I started http://Splits.io  in 2013 in uni, I did it as a free, open source project. I believe all software, especially by individuals, should be open source by default. Just as splits, strats, and skips should be shared by default.

When I started it, I wasn't thinking about the possibility of making money because that's not how I think about things. I wanted to solve a problem I had.

After five years, http://Splits.io  had grown to 10k monthly active users, was constantly crashing, and was sucking hundreds out of my bank account every month. But I loved working on it, so I thought it would be fun to work on it full time.

I thought I could work nearly 100% on new paid features, and use those to pay myself enough to work on http://Splits.io  full-time indefinitely. But things don't go how you plan!

I spent a lot of time on infrastructure and stability, and our biggest new feature, racing, didn't work well behind a paywall. To boot, we still wanted even more stuff that didn't make sense to charge money for.

We did build some kick-ass paid features, but as we did it became obvious that the most premium features were the ones I'd already released for free.

So.

We're kicking it back into first gear. We're revisiting every feature. We want http://Splits.io  to keep serving you forever, not just until my bank account runs dry.

We're forcing ourselves to rethink how we can provide our S-tier features to people in a way that doesn't kill us.

So we have some good news and some bad news.

1. No more ads.

A while ago we posted an extreme Patreon goal to turn off all ads forever at $10,000 per month through Patreon. We're currently at $221 per month. We're doing it anyway. No more ads starting today.

We always hated serving them, and we really hated feeling spiteful about ad blockers, because we get it. We're forcing ourselves to be more above-board about what you're giving for what you're getting. On that note...

2. A lot of free features are becoming paid.

We've historically offered all our best features for free, and only a few paid cherries on top. As much as we loved this setup, it's actually killing us, and a dead http://Splits.io  can't help you speedrun.

So a lot more stuff is getting rolled into subscriptions to better reflect where the real premium stuff is.

(Note that this is not a clean swap of ads-for-subs; ads generate very little.)

3. We're building auto-submit to http://Speedrun.com .

One of our core pillars is making PBing easier. We work at this from both ends—making it easier to PB, and making it easier *when* you PB.

Y'all love auto-highlighting, so we're taking the next step and handling your submission to http://Speedrun.com  for you. We'll fill out everything based on the data already embedded in your run. Coming soon

4. Subscriptions are getting simplified. We're combining our $4 tier and $6 tier into one $9 tier.

Remember that we're starting over and re-cataloguing all the features we've spent six years building and releasing for free, while paying out the butt in server costs. Starting from that blank canvas, the number of features rolled into this $9 tier is massive.

5. We're launching a partner program. Not much shareable here yet, but more info soon

6. Miscellaneous racing news!

We're dedicated to racing for the long haul. We're adding splitting & blind splitting to racing (and keeping it 100% free).

Blind splitting will generate splits for you on a blind run, when you don't know how many splits are in the run (and don't want spoilers). Out today!

That's all the announcements!

We're excited about where we're going, and we're thankful for your help getting there! We know a few of these sting, but we promise we're doing it all so we can keep providing the best speedrunning storage, sharing, and analytics to you forever.

Shoutouts to everyone who thought our cherries on top were good enough to pay money for—you're our motivation to keep going! As thanks, if you're currently on the $4 tier or higher (Patreon or on-site), you're grandfathered in forever.

And 𝓼𝓮𝔁𝔂 shoutouts to those who've contributed code to http://Splits.io  over the years—without you, everything would be a little lonelier. As thanks to you, you're getting lifetime subscriptions for free. (DM me @glcls)

And by the way, we're staying open source.

- Glacials