The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: October 19, 2008

Official News page 4


MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

by Hazed

When we first moved off AOL to the web, we set up a very complicated computer network involving expensive servers: one for Fed, one for our email, one for the website, and one each for the other games we were developing. Each server was a big box, taking up a lot of room in a large cabinet in a co-location facility. The whole set-up cost a lot of money to maintain.

Over the years, as computing power got cheaper and boxes got smaller, we were able to reduce the size of our equipment, until now, everything runs on just one small machine. The good news is that every time we were able to get rid of a big server, it reduced our monthly costs.

But over the past few years, energy prices have rocketed, and so our co-lo facility is having to put its prices up in order to pass on the increase in power costs to the customers. That means the monthly bills for keeping Fed going will be going up. So, at a time when the credit crunch is hitting everybody hard, we need to nag you for more money.

We love the fact that Fed is free to play, so that everybody can enjoy the game without having to worry about paying for their time in the game, but this only works if some of you do give us money - even if you don't have to. We rely on the income we receive from selling slithy toves, tokens that let you buy extras in the game, to pay the monthly bills. If we don't get enough money each month, we won't be able to keep going. Sadly, real life companies won't accept groats!

Some of the things you can do with slithy toves: you can buy the incredibly useful navcomp that allows you to navigate around Sol with ease; you can keep customs off your back; you can get a variety of remote price checkers, and you can buy prestigious, exclusive items of jewelry. There's a complete list of all the things you can buy with slithies here.

Slithy toves cost $5 each. You can make a purchase of between two and ten slithies, or you can take out a subscription to buy slithies every month for a discounted price (four for the price of three). For more info and to buy some slithies, go here.


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