My Departure + New Leadership In GFL

[Roy 10,830]

My Departure
Hi everyone,

 

This is a difficult thread to write, but I am announcing my departure from GFL. I made GFL over ten years ago and it has exceeded all my initial expectations by a long shot (especially since I made it as a joke at 13 years old, lol). GFL is by far the biggest project I've worked on in my life time. It was also a big factor in all the technical knowledge I have now and technically responsible for the two big jobs (one current) I've had in the past.

 

I am not going to go into detail on why I made this choice, but it's related to my personal life and health. To be honest, I think it's more overdue than anything and I've wanted to make this choice in the past, but something kept bringing me back over and over again (I guess that happens when something was such a big part of your life?).

 

One thing I want to say is while GFL has had its ups and downs in the past/present, it has had so much success throughout the years (look at this thread for instance). We're still going as well! We've beaten our previous records earlier this year which was amazing to see! The community itself is very unique and I know there are many individuals with a lot of potential in the community both GFL-related and also life/career-related. (I know these individuals are going to go far )

 

I wanted to thank every single person who has made this journey possible from our staff to Supporters/VIPs all the way to regular players/users on our game servers, website, and Discord server(s). There are many people I wish I could tag for their help, motivation, and amazing friendships, but the list would be far too long and I know I'd forget to tag at least some individuals which wouldn't be fair.

 

What's Next?
I am passing the community's ownership to @Aurora. Aurora has been a huge contributor in GFL's success the past few years and has been a very great friend of mine. She is the only one I've trusted enough to hand ownership over to which should speak high volumes on how I believe she'll do. To me, she has been doing more for GFL than myself over the past couple of years. She has a unique skillset and definitely has what it takes to run GFL both from a technical and community prospective.

 

There were some legal issues due to Aurora's age and where she lives. She cannot legally own the PayPal account or the business itself. Therefore, I stated I'm fine with owning the PayPal account and business entity for now and we can revisit the topic once she is legally allowed to own these entities. I am also creating a secondary account for her on our PayPal account so she can use it to purchase plugins, servers, etc. for GFL in the meantime.

 

I also advised on dismantling the Anycast network due to some issues we've had and since I was the only one actively maintaining it (or at least trying to with the time I had). The Anycast network was a huge part of our success the past couple of years I believe, but I could never get around to completely remaking it like I had planned. I was starting to work on a new project called "RoyNet" a couple weeks ago which would have replaced Compressor. I made it pretty far, but ran into a roadblock. I knew how to get around the roadblock, but it would have been a lot of additional work. Unfortunately, I was getting very stressed from working on this project, working on other issues in GFL, and then working my full-time job which is why I decided not to go forward with it. Since we own the IP blocks, thankfully we can move to any hosting provider we'd like. I suggested GSK obviously since we have dedicated servers there already and I work there. We can setup a BGP session to have the Anycast IPs assigned to the machines themselves, but I will need to teach Aurora how to route them to the machine from our private switch with GSK. This would also resolve the annoying IPIP tunnel issue we've had on our game server machines themselves (e.g. servers getting a "cannot bind to port error") and will save 20 bytes off of each packet since we will not be tunneling the traffic through IPIP anymore (less inbound bandwidth to our machines, hooray!).

 

These back-end processes will take some time, but I believe that is the current goal. @Aurora will likely update everybody on these as time goes on. I know dismantling the Anycast network will require downtime after a solution is found, so that'll definitely be announced when it comes along.

 

To conclude, I hope to stay in-touch with the friends I've made from GFL and I just wanted to thank everybody again for making all of this possible! This post isn't as in-depth as I had wanted it to be, but I'm honestly trying to avoid going into detail because I know I'd be crying for a good few hours thinking back about everything in GFL, etc.

[Gigi 43]

aw shit bye

[señor pablo 11]

we love you king julian!!!

 

[MythicalGrubbin 3]

its been a wild ride man, sad to see you go. I hope you fare well on your new things you do

[loucop 48]

goodbye, be safe best of luck to your future!!

[Plum 105]

I legally forbid you from leaving Roy

[Shuruia 3,079]

I think we all knew this was coming at some point. You've been practically hinting at it for years now, and Aurora was always the best choice to pass the torch to.

 

Been a good ten years, at least. I'll never forget the 2011 squeaker Roy.

[ReaperJK 91]

I go cry now.

 

[DarthVader 15]

but what about boblox division

[calebevb 103]

Roy doesnt love us  nahh jk man best of luck on whatever is going on in your life

[Auralanity 1,033]

o7 sir. And congrats @Aurora to becoming the new owner of GFL. I am so proud of you and I know you will continue to lead GFL on the right path~ ♡

[ItzTropicalx 13]

What an absolute legend. Goodbye, you will never be forgotten and best of luck to you. 

 

[Yogpod 118]

[Runda 206]

Take care Roy. 

[Aurora is smelly 192]

Roy you better still talk baseball with me that’s all I ask 

 

May we never forget the legend of Christin Deacon on hogwarts rp constantly getting detention

Edited July 13, 2021 by CSS ZE Secretary

[Salad 966]

love ya roy

[Rick 1,576]

[JGuary55 700]

What the fuck

[Dominikk 99]

goodbye @Roy, hold on well 

[Hamtaro 46]

Does this mean Phas nights are no more @Roy?

[korrababe 7]

It was an honor. Farewell sweet prince. 

[Muse 53]

Its a deep sadness to see you go but it also means that you will face new challenges in life. I speak for everyone when i say that you creating GFL gave us all pure joy and a safeplace! You will be remembered forever in GFL for your kindness and the time you have put into this! 

LEGEND

Edited July 13, 2021 by Muse

[VilhjalmrF 2,092]

I fucking love you man. Stay in touch with me please!

[Bara 38]

Sad news, but I know how you're feeling. I came to a similar decision few months (or over year now?) ago. After 13 years of leading/management of (source) servers it's hard to keep the focus.

[Sophie~ ♡ 175]

adios amigos