Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Fish

[p]Someone once said "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction." That someone was Pablo Picasso. While not being a game developer he understood that endings and beginnings are often the same thing.[/p][p]Hello Artinauts.[/p][p]This is a hard one to write.[/p][p]On March 16th, 2026, we will be turning off the OWW servers. The game will no longer be accessible after that date. No more building. No more wandering. No more discovering that weird gallery someone built inside a volcano at 3am.[/p][p]We're sorry.[/p][p]In our last message, we told you the game was complete and that we'd keep the lights on for as long as we could. We meant it. The truth is we've been paying out of pocket for the last four years, since 2022 - because we loved what we built together, and because shutting it down felt like bricking up a cathedral. But the spreadsheet has finally won the argument spreadsheets always win.[/p][hr][/hr][h2]What's Not Ending[/h2][p]Here's the hopeful bit: DAISY and Kultura.art aren't going anywhere.[/p][p]The artworks, the artists, the AI that treats everyone's taste as equally valid - all of that continues. Kultura will keep growing, keep connecting artists with audiences, keep doing what OWW set out to do from day one: make art accessible, democratic, and personal.[/p][p]The art keeps arting. The walls just won't be there anymore.[/p][hr][/hr][h2]What You Should Do Before March 16th[/h2][p]If you'd like, walk through your favourite galleries one more time. Take screenshots. Record videos. Stream it. Capture the spaces you built and the spaces that moved you.[/p][p]The galleries you created - the cruise ships, the liminal mazes, the faithful recreations of museums that exist in countries you've never visited, the ones with the questionable jukebox choices - these were extraordinary. They were yours.[/p][hr][/hr][h2]Not the End. The End of the Beginning.[/h2][p]We started OWW because we asked a stupid question: why are there no video games about Art? Eight years later, we still think it was the right question. We still think the answer matters.[/p][p]Kultura carries that answer forward. And who knows - maybe one day, in some form we can't quite picture yet, there will be new walls to occupy. We're not promising anything. We're not teasing a sequel. We're just saying that the idea that started all this hasn't stopped being exciting to us.[/p][p]But if it happens, it might be a very long time from now, and it might look nothing like what you remember. That's okay. Duchamp didn't make two urinals.[/p][hr][/hr][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Thank You[/h2][p]To every Artinaut who built a gallery, bought an artwork, left a comment, uploaded a painting, argued about curation, danced in the Plaza, or simply wandered through someone else's imagination for a while - thank you.[/p][p]You proved that a game about looking at paintings and building walls could find its people. You built an Artiverse. The walls may come down, but what you made in them was real.[/p][p]See you on Kultura. Keep arting.[/p][p]- The StikiPixels[/p]