Ludum Dare 2025 is cancelled | Hacker News Reader

Ludum Dare 2025 is cancelled

ludumdare.com

68 pointsJSLegendDev17 comments

Was it really all solely organized by this guy? Impressive. I'm surprised they don't have enough sponsors for him to pay himself. It could fairly easy be made into a hiring funnel of sorts, no?

I suggest he open a patreon and say "I need this much money to survive for one year because of this this and that reason" and send the mail to .. everyone

I can assure you he'll have his finances covered in less than a month lol.

Yeah, I really don't understand people who run a really popular thing, run into financial difficulties, and then shut the thing down instead of, you know, asking for money. Just mystifying.

Pride and separation I guess. Easy to separate two parts of your life if you don't intermingle finances.

Pride could be the need to finance things yourself through good ol' fashioned work, which is foolish but some are raised to think this way.

Or you could read his (short) message properly, and see he mentioned more than just finances. People have lives. Not everything is about money

Did you read the comment I replied to?

We're likely to not understand this case in particular because he explicitly says that he values his privacy. I'm sure he has good reasons, and we can speculate (I know I have my personal headcanon), but it's his decision to make, and I trust it to be a well-founded one.

Yeah but my complaint is more general, I've seen companies or people shut down because of financial difficulties many times even when their product is popular, without actually asking for money first.

Seems that yields about ~$323/month already: https://bsky.app/profile/distraction.engineer/post/3lfsfyp4v...

Their Patreon is here, in case you'd wanna help change that: https://www.patreon.com/mikekasprzak

AFAICT, to find the Patreon you have to click a tiny 'support us' link at the bottom, and then scrolling down.

This post could have been a Wikipedia style annoying header.

I'm not inclined to donate to things I like, it just doesn't pop up in my head to. But if I knew something I loved needed help, I'd open my wallet. You just have to let me know.

It seems like it's not just about money but also time commitments.

Bringing on new people to help organize it would take time in and of itself

I remember some people were mad at him when the seemed-to-mostly-work Wordpress site was replaced with the seemed-to-mostly-not-work custom SPA CMS several years ago. I wonder what ever came of that. I did not have direct contact with him at any point. I did hate that it was a SPA.

That is a bummer. I’m sure tons of people would have been happy to step up. Community is honestly something fragile that needs to be supported by more than one or two people. So many takers, hardly any givers to be found.

notch should offer to wire him $200,000 for old times sake.

First thought that popped into my head.

That site is broken on FF Android.

Another entry to file under You Know The Job Market Is Bad When

Reply on news.ycombinator.com