👌🏻 (Patreon)

As you probably already figured out: SFMLab is fine. The site was never really gone, I'm doing fine financially, am not wanted by the authorities and SFMLab was never in danger of getting shut down. If you were even a slight bit observant, you will have noticed the hidden link (omega.sfmlab.com) where you could find a (mostly) functional SFMLab. And even then, the helpful folks in the SFMLab/Smutbase Discord channel were redirecting people to the link when they got lost. Thanks to the SFMLab/Smutbase regulars for being a lovely bunch of degenerates.(you know who you are) Where would we be without you! Happy April Fools day everybody!

Some of you might have giggled. A lot of you probably thought it wasn't very funny. And that's in part because it wasn't necessarily meant to be. A great deal of people depend on SFMLab as a model resource, but also on its forum and PM system. If SFMLab were to disappear overnight, that's several hundreds of gigabytes of SFM models and maps gone off the internet. Your next best option is asking around to get models from someone who might have them backed up. In addition, some people handle commissions and other potentially sensitive data through SFMLab PM. Email would probably serve you better in that case, and might even be more secure. SFMLab should not be your single point of failure. If SFMLab is the only lifeline to commissions or models you paid for, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

The lesson I wanted to impart is simple. It's the same as a previous April fools I did for the site.(the fake FBI/Europol takedown) You don't realize how much you depend on something until it's gone. This is the case for many things, not just SFMLab. There are services that people use every day that could just disappear overnight. While there is no immediate threat to SFMLab's existence, who knows where we will be at next year. If anything, I hope I made people at least a bit more aware of SFMLab's position within the SFM community. While I'm sure there are many files that people have backed up, there's plenty of files that would be lost to time, should the site get nuked.

I feel like I lived in the SFM scene for these last few years, and it's been amazing seeing this particular subculture develop and mutate. I would be heartbroken if even the most niche/worst files on SFMLab were lost, and I don't think I'd be the only one. That's right, even the FNAF garbage! I want data scientists and internet historians to be able to stumble upon these files in 20 years and ask themselves "what the fuck were these people thinking?!" In all seriousness, taking the site down for a day is both a funny april fools joke, but it's also a reminder of how fragile our ecosystem is. Judging from the responses I've received through Discord, Tumblr and Patreon, “taking down the site” has had exactly the effect I intended it to have.

Also, I noticed several people pledged to the Patreon as a result of this. As much as I would like to get more money out of SFMLab, that was never what the site and this gag was about. If you use the site frequently and you want to contribute, the support is ofcourse appreciated. But at the current support level, the Patreon pays for most of the server and domain costs. I would rather provide some kind of lasting value instead of getting even more money for basically keeping the servers up. I hope to provide many of you an avenue to go beyond SFM, into Blender or perhaps Maya using resources on Smutba.se. I also hope I can continue to provide a useful service with some quality of life improvements on SFMLab as well. If you have suggestions or wishes for SFMLab or Smutbase, I'm always listening for your feedback.

SFMLab isn't going anywhere and I hope you guys will stick around until long after Valve pulls the plug on SFM.

Have a nice day and enjoy the site!

-Ganonmaster🤤