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Khloe

<div>Hey there Fuzzies!
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<div>Recently, there has been a lot of conversation about censorship of the internet and third parties forcing sites to make changes to their content allowances or face financial penalties. We are sad to say that Fur Affinity has not been immune to this pressure. While we used to be able to use third-party advertisers to help fund the site, they are now bringing in less than $150 USD a month. For reference, the cost to keep Fur Affinity running is over $25,000 USD per month (there’s a breakdown further into the post, for those curious)!
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<div>Over the past couple of years we have been working with our third-party advertisers to meet their demands on content moderation. <strong>This has not resulted in any changes to our policies</strong>, but we <strong>have</strong> had to shift more staff focus to rating change tickets (which unfortunately slows down our response times in other categories). Some users may have noticed they received multiple ratings change notifications in a short span of time. This is a result of more submissions in violation of General rating guidelines being reported to us combined with more staff focusing on that specific area. And just to be clear: Content that does not break our rules has no action taken against it, even if it is reported.
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<div>This effort has cost us in resources and time in the hopes of having this source of funding restored completely. Despite jumping through every hoop presented to us, we have had our income severely restricted with one demand to remove the restriction: remove all of what <strong>they</strong> consider to be “adult content”, <strong>which we refuse to do</strong>.
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<div>To reiterate: <strong>We will not be removing adult content from Fur Affinity.</strong>
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<div>What the third-party advertisers consider adult isn’t even always <strong>actual</strong> adult content. For further context here’s a snippet from our Fur Affinity Advertising Manager, Jamesalesto:
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<div>"Howdy!
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<div>What makes this situation frustrating is that the bar for what advertisers consider “adult content” is very very low. For example they consider plus size characters, two characters hugging, and “barbie doll nudity” to be adult content, despite these being normal everyday things that are not adult at all. This is why you may see other sites with restrictions on how characters can’t be posed or dressed “too provocatively.”
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<div>We receive a daily list of items that they have flagged as violations and have to sort through them. If they’re legitimate violations, we re-rate them. If they aren’t, we don’t touch them. Submissions that are not violations of our policies are still held against us.
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<div>We have had many email conversations, Zoom calls, and even an in-person meeting with representatives to help resolve this to no avail.
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<div>Given this uphill (and frankly annoying) struggle, if properly funded we would like to aim towards removing third-party advertising entirely, and instead focus on our in-house community advertisers. They are the heart and soul of the fandom, and they deserve to have the eyes of our active users."
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<div>And here with a follow up is Fur Affinity’s Site Owner Sciggles
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<div>"With more and more sites restricting the content they allow, we believe it’s important to maintain our current site standings to protect the artistic freedom of our talented community. However, this comes with a hefty burden of now needing other ways to fund the site. Third-party advertisers aren’t entirely off the table at the moment, but as the funding from them has been significantly lowered, they cannot be relied upon as heavily as they were before. They want us to play by their rules; we have high traffic that they would love to get ads in front of. But we know that censoring Fur Affinity to meet their standards for unrestricted funding isn’t healthy for the site or the community.
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<div>For the sake of transparency, these are the monthly costs (in USD) for the site (note—the funds are specific but we will not be saying who we contract and host with for their privacy and protection, they are good beans):
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<div>Contracted staff/coders: <strong>*</strong>$15k
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<div>Loans: <strong>**</strong>$6,258
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<div>Hosting: $6,000
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<div>Cloudflare $260
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<div>Accounting: $235
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<div>Email services: $124
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<div>Extra: <strong>***</strong>??? Varies
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<div><strong>*</strong> The majority of our staff are volunteers. This number is split in different ways between 7 individuals that dedicate their days to the harder parts of managing Fur Affinity, such as: managing code, handling advertising, urgent emails and meetings, legal obligations and reports, and so many more high-level management tasks. More than Trouble Tickets and not being paid nearly their worth for the work they do and still very much volunteer for the rest of their time. These roles are vital to keeping FA online and are more than what one person would be able to handle on their own.
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<div><strong>**</strong> This is based off of a percentage of sales on Paypal. We were forced to take out a loan when a third-party initially pulled out in June 2025 and hoped we would be able to resolve and bounce back from the issue to not need to ask for community help at the time. Trust me that I wish we had not gone that route...
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<div><strong>***</strong> This does not include any emergency funds needed or refilling retainers with our lawyers. Those are difficult to calculate in a monthly breakdown as they are more of an “as-needed” expense. It is usually $5k at a time when we are due to refill the retainer. Unfortunately we’ve needed to refill it often as we’ve needed help bringing FA into compliance with the ever-changing modern day regulations and legal standards. As for “emergency” funds, we would ideally like $20-30k set aside. “Emergency” in this case would basically be anything related to physical hardware issues.
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<div>We are <strong>3 months behind</strong> on some of these items and are grateful to our hosts for being understanding and willing to give us such grace. We had hoped to resolve these issues with third-party advertising to catch up but we now know that isn’t going to be a proper resolution for this. We must instead reach out to the community for assistance if we are to keep things going. This has been difficult to come to terms with and try to approach. We were hoping to make things work out without needing to request more from the community, and it is difficult to announce defeat when we want to be bringing you our best.
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<div>I can’t begin to tell you the countless hours, days, and months spent trying to work with third-party advertisers to ultimately be met with the door slammed in our faces for not caving to their standards or for pushing back against AI and cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin). We hope by approaching things from a new angle with the support of the community, it will make things better overall for the site and all of you.
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<div>We have the crowdfunding set to increase overtime to hopefully cover up to 6 months of costs for FA but we are grateful for any amount we are able to bring in while we work to improve our systems for future funding."
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<div>If you'd like to read more info about this we have an announcement live on the site here:
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Support Fur Affinity’s Community Funding

<div>Hey all, Lottie Lapine also known as Swollenbabyfat here with the support of my wife.
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<div>After much mulling it over and consideration on my part, I decided I wanted to be very upfront and honest with everyone, my overall health and lupus has gotten to a point that I am having to deeply look at <strong>how I can change my life to accommodate me and my disabilities, and one of those things is near full time care</strong>.
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<div>My wife has been my caretaker as often as she can be, but her career has suffered due to her having to take time off to take me to hospitals, doctors, and specialists. So she has been having to move from one job to another often these last few years and it’s been a strain on us as well as her job prospects. My medical overhead alone is equal to most of our general living bills.
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<div>We’ve been working hard towards me being the primary bread winner so she can be at home with me a majority of the time and take care of our home and me. We are close to this happening, but due to a backlog of work I had to take on to ensure our housing stability and cover medical debt, I am no longer able to take on additional clients until I catch up.
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<div><strong>We are two months behind on rent and behind on many other bills and have a large amount of medical debt</strong>. I am housebound a majority of the time. The stress of all of this has been weighing heavily on my health and I am quite frankly scared of the near future if I cannot get my feet underneath me.
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<div><strong>We are hoping with aid from the community we can raise this money to pay our late rent, pay our immediate bills and medical debt, and give us enough time for me to catch up on work and reframe our lives so that my wife can be at home with me near full time.</strong>
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<div>I have no familial or government support. I have spent most of my life very independent, but I’m asking for help now as I do not have the capacity to get back to where I need to be without aid. Thank you so much for reading and your support.
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Community Aid for Lottie's Health and Stability

<div><em>DISCLAIMER: This fundraiser was disabled for several hours due to GoFundMe terms of service regarding naming actual parties involved in this dispute. If it now, after hasty corrections, reads too confusing and you want to learn more, find me on twitter and I'm happy to elaborate. Now back to regular service...</em>
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<div>I am Argo Tuulik, one of the key creatives responsible for bringing you the (allegedly) cursed video game <em>Disco Elysium</em> that brought joy to millions across the world and mostly misery to the people who made it. I am the writer behind characters like Evrart Claire, Cuno, Jean Vicquemare, Judit Minot, the Hardie Boys, René and Gaston, cops in Precinct 41 -- to name a few I am most proud of.
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<div>"What was that about misery?" and "What is to be done?" are questions for another day. Rest assured, there is a plan in motion to take the Elysium IP, which predates the video game studio by fifteen years, back from the moneylenders, who ran it to the ground, then locked it away from the world -- and restore it back to the people who *actually* made it. People like Robert Kurvitz, Martin Luiga, Alexander Rostov and yes, yours truly -- Argo Tuulik. Hunter-seeker Kuno's locked in.
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<div>But like I said, this is a fight for another day. Today is just about survival.
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<div>In February 2024, I was the last member of the original <em>Disco Elysium</em> writing team to be forced out of the place I helped build from the ground up. Unlike the friends who fell before me, I was never a shareholder, did not benefit from the game's success and received no compensation on my departure. They just took my laptop. The dread of suddenly being an unemployed Estonian immigrant in one of the most ruthlessly expensive cities in the world -- London -- drove me to some genuinely awful career decisions. Worst of them, no doubt, was crossing paths with a malignant tech-millionaire determined to force his way into the RPG-landscape by any means necessary.
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<div>During the last few years in what once was my homeworld, I was locked in a Cold War with the creatively bankrupt / morally corrupt pirates on the captain's bridge, especially the convicted financial criminal steering the ship from the shadows. It was hard, but on the line was artistic integrity, not my life. There was still air to breathe. Then along comes Claimant.
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<div>Fully aware of my dire financial situation, the Claimant attempted to enslave me and -- metaphorically speaking -- lock me in his basement without windows, while he steals my name and trades my reputation in for investor-bait, short-term profit and good will of the <em>Disco Elysium</em> fans. I rebelled against his shameless greed and absolute lack of ethics. Despite the *harrowing* financial situation, I left when I saw the inhuman visage cowering behind the techbro mask.
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<div>With the help of friends I tried to start anew, but the Claimant followed me home. In no unclear terms he demanded a seat at the table in the house that we designed to be greed-proof. "Give me a C-suite position in Summer Eternal," the Claimant said, licking his lips. He did not know that in Summer Eternal the position he is asking for is the ditch behind the hole-ridden brick-wall.
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<div>I refused the Claimant. But Money doesn't take no for an answer, and in indignant rage he signed an NDA with the pirates in search of ammunition against me. Then bragged about it on tape two seconds later. Money asked for hollow-points but all the pirates had was BB pellets, so he made up lies. Blinded by bloodlust, the pirates wolfed down the tales, and instead of proof, asked for seconds. Couriers from some of the most expensive law firms in London started coming to my door every day. It got so bad I had to go to the cops. Still, I did not yield to the coordinated pressure of the Amoral Alliance. I will not yield, ‘cause letting Claimant in would defeat the purpose of Summer Eternal. "In a sick organism even a healthy cell is doomed to die," writes Ursula LeGuin. And bringing Money into Summer Eternal felt to me like handing Lung Cancer the keys to my body with an encouraging "Drive it like you stole it, bud." It was not an option.
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<div>Then the Claimant took me to court and the question immediately became: "Do I want to automatically lose, or do I want to pay 7200 pounds to have representation in the High Court? The hearing is in five days. Three if you don't count the weekend." I paid and it wiped out most of my family's savings. Being a <em>Disco Elysium</em> writer just hadn't been that profitable unfortunately.
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<div>The first hearing did not go my way -- there just wasn’t enough time to prepare. The judge ruled in favor of granting the Claimant the interim injunction that he sought, preventing me from working on my chosen field for six months, pending further trial to determine the validity of his claim. Effective immediately, the ruling left me without income or the ability to provide for my family. The blow landed extra-hard because I'm the sponsor for my partner's visa. No visa -- no Right to Rent. Brave the streets hobocop-style I guess?
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<div>Then the next day, legal counsel informs me that filing the defence costs *another* 7200 Pound sterling. The alternative is to auto-lose the case of course, but I genuinely believe that's kinda the only way to actually lose this one, ‘cause the Claimant has been carelessly lying under oath left and right, and I have been diligently documenting everything since day 1.
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<div>I scrape together the money. The moment it leaves my account I realize there isn't enough left to make the next rent, or council tax, or utilities or even the phone bill. In a desperate panic of being completely stranded in a strange country with no safety net, I pack everything I can fit -- most things I can't -- into our old Ford Transit van, and my partner, myself and our three cats head towards mainland Europe the same night. Then around 3 AM the van dies in the middle of the highway in France, near St. Quentin, due to a catastrophic engine failure. Next day we learn that no one wants to work on it. Some quote the UK license plate as the reason, others say it's the weight. Even the local dealership refuses to take a look.
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</div><img alt="" media_type="3" src="https://d2g8igdw686xgo.cloudfront.net/84830593_1734040717331253_r." width="100%" />
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<div>Now, in a situation where merely standing still is racking up debt, we're down to begging money from the savings of our relatives -- none of whom live in the First World. My partner's retired mum fronts the 2000 Euro bill out of her savings, to have the van with our remaining belongings towed to Friendly Ground.
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<div>That leaves just us and our three cats. Another 1000 Euros for trains, fees and the whole shebang. I don't know where that money came from or who went to bed hungry because of it. It's been kind of a blur lately.
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<div>Exhausted, hungry, freezing, we make it to our relatives with our three cats. The van is already here. All it needs is an engine rebuild.
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<div>This fight has brought me and my family to the brink of bankruptcy, and every now and then I hear faint whispers, friendly advice from the dark: <em>"Take it... Ssssssettle... Sssssettle with the Claimant... This can all go away if you just kneel before him and kiss the ring. He'll grow tired and move on... Ssssssettle..."</em>
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<div>I come to you now because I don't want to settle. I don't want Chaotic Evil Claimant and Homeworld Pirates to corrupt the flickering light on the horizon that's given me purpose throughout all of this. I promised the first house we burn down is our own, and here I stand in the smouldering ashes. April is almost here. I swear I saw some bluebells spring. Please help me survive the winter, and I *will* Return by your side in the Summer and stay.
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<div><em>Breakdown of expenses:</em>
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<li><em>£80,000 estimated minimum legal costs to defend Argo and Dora in High Court throughout 2024/2025</em>
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<li><em>£20,000 to cover expenses from the past two months, including accrued legal fees, overdue bills and debts, towing, Transit engine rebuild, rent</em>
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<div><em>How the money will be spent:</em>
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<li><em>Legal fees paid directly to our lawyers</em>
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<li><em>Rent, utilities and food until April 2025 when the injunction runs out and we can go back to work</em>
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<li><em>Critical expenses such as medical and veterinary care</em>
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<div><em>Any funds raised (or left) over the eventual costs will go towards building a new legal claim to restore ownership of the Elysium IP to its original creative worldbuilders, who never signed away rights to the characters and narratives predating the game studio and even its predecessor, the small cultural movement with a seagull on our black flag.</em>
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<div><em>Arx out.</em>
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