Hey, JaSn here! We know it’s been a while since we’ve posted on the newsletter, so we figured it’s time to get you up-to-date on what’s been happening and what BlockTanks has in store for 2025.

How It’s Going

To say that BlockTanks has gone through a lot this month is a huge understatement. Seriously, you have no idea how crazy of a month it’s been. Here’s a recap:

• Event Planning: With nothing else going on at the outset of the year, I decided to start to pull together clan wars, the quintessential epic BlockTanks event – pitting clans against each other in an officially hosted series of large 20-minute matches.
• Kevin Discontinues BlockTanks?! Well, yes, on the 8th, Kevin announced the discontinuation of BlockTanks’ development–that is, he ran out of the available funds to keep working on the game.
• Ownership Transition: 2 days after the announcement, another team of developers that created a web game originating from surviv.io contacted Kevin in pursuit of purchasing BlockTanks.
• Kevin Changes His Mind: After weeks of negotiations, on the 28th, Kevin decided that he would retain ownership of BlockTanks, and set his sights on setting the stage for the game being run by established volunteers from the community (such as myself).

When it comes to what has happened with the game itself, we were not able to finish what we sought to do in spring 2024; efforts to restructure the game’s code hit a snag.

However, we did manage to add an array of new maps for all of the gamemodes, bring back 3v3, and update the shop back in October (Notably, the shop is now overdue for an update).

We also brought back the Spooky Snipers LTM in October, and hosted Throwback Thankgiving, a massive 50-player Free-For-All as a flashback to the 2020 Thanksgiving event, in November.

What’s Next

Kevin himself will no longer actively participate in growing and developing BlockTanks as he did in the past, but he is looking for volunteers to run BlockTanks and continue its progress in all areas. If we do pull this off, that means BlockTanks will be run by a team of volunteers that have time on their hands to do things like keeping the shop up to date, changing up the official maps, and even working on updates for the game. If you’re interested, more application information will be posted soon on our official Discord server.

Here’s what we have planned for the short term:

• February Frenzy: For those who remember May Mayhem in 2020, we’re doing a rerun this year, except on a different month; get kills with the weapons of the week to complete missions, climb a global leaderboard, and get awesome rewards!
• Clan Wars: We are concretely planning to host clan wars in the short run; we can promise that clan wars will be hosted in the first half of 2025.
• Map Updates: We will continue to change up the official maps; our primary goal is to have as many official maps as possible legendary in the eyes of the community (basically, we want more Fortresses and Town of Nukeses everywhere in the map pool). Feel free to view the Google Doc we created to record changes to the map pool in real time.
• Shop Update: Of course, with the shop being overdue for an update, we will be doing our best to assemble a team of volunteers and update the shop with a new theme and new items not too far off in the future.
• Future Updates?! We will be working with volunteer programmers who are fully authorized by Kevin to change the code to update the game with new changes and features; stay tuned for the next newsletter, where the BlockTanks Roadmap will once again make its debut!

Make sure to join our Discord server if you have any questions, if you want to participate in future events and BlockTanks-related discussions down the line, or if you just want to have fun or contribute!

Until next time,

JaSn

Community Manager