It has been a crazy few days, as most of you already know. But SimHaven is back online.
During the downtime, I had a chance to step back, think about everything that has happened, and take a closer look at how we move forward from here.
Several people have spoken up in our Discord, and some have messaged me privately, about how strange it is that so many people have joined the server but do not actively play SimHaven or participate in the community.
I have noticed it too.
It was also brought up in connection with our recent poll about multisimming and multiple accounts. The winning option was one Sim online at a time and one account per player. However, some of the people voting do not actively play SimHaven, participate in discussions, or interact with the community outside of voting in polls.
Again, I noticed that too.
I am not directly accusing anyone of anything. However, considering everything that has happened over the past few days, I would be lying if I said it did not look suspicious.
After giving it a lot of thought, I have decided that SimHaven will allow multisimming on a single account.
We have loyal players who genuinely care about SimHaven, welcome new people, keep lots active, and try to help the community grow. With our current population, it can be difficult for those players to run certain lots, keep services available, and create things for everyone else to enjoy while being limited to one Sim online at a time.
The one-account-per-player rule will remain in place and will continue to be enforced.
That distinction is important. Allowing multiple Sims from one account gives active players more flexibility without opening the door to unlimited accounts, excessive farming, or other behavior that could damage the game’s economy.
We will continue working to keep SimHaven balanced and its economy healthy. If multisimming begins causing serious problems, we will address them. This does not mean the economy is being abandoned or that everything suddenly becomes a free-for-all.
Multisimming was also possible in the original version of The Sims Online. The reason many players have grown uncomfortable with it over the years is not simply because it exists, but because of how easily it can become unbalanced when combined with multiple accounts or used purely to exploit the economy.
We may explore additional balancing measures in the future as we see how this works within SimHaven.
Moving forward, I will also handle community polls more carefully. Poll results still matter, but I will take greater consideration of who is voting, who is actually active, and who is genuinely participating in the SimHaven community.
The people who support SimHaven, play the game, contribute to the community, and have its best interests at heart deserve to be heard.
Unfortunately, some communities appear to view these projects as a competition rather than a shared effort to preserve something people loved. Recent events have made it clear that there are people willing to interfere with, disrupt, or attempt to sabotage other communities instead of simply focusing on building their own.
SimHaven will not operate that way.
Following the major DDoS attack the other night, we have officially moved to a more secure and better-protected hosting provider. They have a strong reputation for DDoS protection and for working with their customers and law enforcement when attacks are made against their network.
We are taking security seriously, we are learning from what happened, and we are putting stronger protections in place.
Most importantly, we are not going anywhere.
Considering everything the community has dealt with over the past few days, I think we may be due for an event soon.
Stay tuned.