Hey Reader - Happy Monday!
Fingers crossed, this email lands in your inbox without getting yeeted into the void. If you were around in 2024, you might remember the GIANT WEBSITE FUCKATHON—downtime, bullshit, and endless headaches. That whole mess ended with me telling my host of five-plus years to fuck off and moving Hashtag to a paid host that (theoretically) knows how to keep shit online.
But because I’m done shoving all my eggs into one unreliable basket, I also moved my domain emails to a separate paid host. And this past week? The final boss—shifting my domains to a new manager. Of course, InMotion had to get in one last screw-over before I could entirely escape, but everything should be stable now. Should. We’ll see.
February. Woof. Winter is flying by—good and bad. I wouldn’t mind saying goodbye to the stupid cold and ice (I want to try car camping, but I’m not brave or dumb enough to start in winter). But February also means birthday month for Becca (5th) and me (7th). We’re two days apart—plus nine years.
So here’s to another lap around the sun, I guess! 🎉
- Hate to say it, but if you’re cash-strapped and still backing Romain via the Derelicts Patreon, maybe cancel that shit. As someone who talks with him about the project, I want to stay optimistic. But as the creator of Hashtag—and someone here to give you non-bullshit —he hasn’t given Patreon backers anything in months. So, yeah. Do with that what you will.
- On a brighter note, the Beta Hub for V22 of The Infected is live! If you’ve got ideas, now’s the time to hustle over there and drop your suggestions—this is your best shot at getting them into the game this cycle.
A long, long time ago—like, three years—I put together a directory to help folks search for survival games. I loved it. My little archivist heart was happy. But keeping it up to the quality level I believe in—especially when dealing with the chaos of Early Access—is a massive pain in the ass. (Maybe if I didn't already have 12-hour workdays.)
Gameoneer still has a directory, but they pretty much slap in every game that calls itself survival—no notes, no warnings, no heads-up about scams or shady devs. Survival Gaming Club was building their version, but I’m unsure if that’ll continue. Partly because he’s pivoted to dedicated server help on a new site and partly because his site got borked during a transfer. No clue if he’s bringing it back to life.
So, instead of spinning my wheels on a giant directory, I’m leaning harder into the Steam Curator. It’s simple, effective, and helpful—it gives buyers quick, relevant info on the Steam store page. Plus, gamers have told me they use it to find games or dodge bad ones, which is a nice bonus.
Before I dive into a giant retooling (and add a fuckton of new games), I want to make sure the top half of the Curator page is as helpful as possible for you. So:
- Check out the top six horizontal sections on my Curator page.
- Tell me what works and what doesn’t.
- Is there a category or gaming aspect you’d rather see? One you don’t care about at all?
- For example, Steam already shows sale prices further down—so does a dedicated sales section even matter? Or do you not care about me listing sales because you’ll see them when you hit the page anyway?
Please reply and let me know! Your feedback helps me make this thing better for all of us.
For more timely game news and alerts- plus excellent company and chat- be sure to pop into our Discord.
What I'm Watching
My current "white noise while cleaning or working out" is 600 Lb Life on Max. For more active "watching," I'm doing King of the Hill from the start.
What I'm Reading
I briefly burned myself out while sprinting through new authors and titles, and I am now retreating to the familiar with the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik.
What I'm Playing
For something to keep our hands busy while bullshitting, Dee and I recently restarted a V21 run of 7 Days to Die. It’s a solid game for zoning out and clicking buttons at random—honestly, it requires less attention to detail or effort than playing WoW, in my opinion.
However! Tragedy struck. My PC crashed as the game was autosaving????, completely wiping our player profiles. The game world? Fine. But our characters? Gone. Multiple attempts to recover the save? 💀
So we had to start fresh the other night.
Ahhh… fuck that game, lol.
Curated Clicks
Alright, that’s all from me today. I didn’t want to pack anything too special into this email—just in case something is still fucked on the CNAME/MX side, and it ends up getting bounced from a bunch of inboxes.
(I ran some test emails, but that doesn’t cover the chaos of different mail systems, so… fingers crossed.)
If you attempted to access the site over the past few days and hit the error screen - that's been remedied. It should be smooth sailing ahead.
Looking forward to your thoughts on the Curator conundrum- in the meantime, the following games have had their curator post updated: Frigid/Frigid Demo, Zelter, Drive 4 Survival, Bromeliad, Viking City Builder (added to Drama list), Journey of Life, Red Moon Survival, Tides of Despair, Vector Zone, Reign and Ruin, Cannibal Island: Survival.
Jordan