I've completely shut down Aetlis. The servers have been wiped, and everything - including all the source files - has been permanently destroyed.
I need to focus on my life and my career.
The Discord server is completely gone, and the Aetlis database was deleted right along with it.
I've renewed the aetlis.io domain one last time. It'll stay active for at least a year just to block bots and spammers from snatching it up, and after that, it will lapse and self-destruct.
Back in 2020-2021 when Vanis went down due of bots and attacks, Lenny and I (Mocker) were trying to bring the game back. We eventually reached an agreement with Mid (the creator of Vanis), and things were going great. But then Luka stepped in, fed Mid a bunch of straight-up lies and slander about us, and completely sabotaged our deal. That same year, Luka bought the game from Mid and kept it running for the next 5 years.
To quote Aero:
"...due to an incompetent and egotistical developer who did not care to maintain it, and a steady decline of revenue to fuel their addictions of purchasing cosmetic items in games and possible CSAM rumors, among the change in Recaptcha's use policy and consistent attacks, they decided it was best to end the game altogether, instead of handing the development role onto someone else which would break their power hungry agenda."
Because of all that drama, i DDoS'ed Vanis. But the real kicker is that Luka was already planning to announce the game's shutdown three months later anyway.
My biggest highlight with Aetlis was hitting a peak of 40 players... which lasted for all of two minutes. No surprise there, though - this entire genre of games died out a long time ago.
Aside from that, it was just a massive waste of money and precious time that I could have spent on much more useful things.
Did I enjoy it? Yeah, I did. But who cares, haha.
-Mocker