Beginning with the arrival of a new EULA on Monday, Auto-Petters are being deemed illegal content. The topic of the Autopetter (Which was created distinctly as a griefer device aimed at impacting our game) has caused significant development headaches. We understand many of you think the device is harmless, or even an asset to your game. For us, is has changed the construct of our game and had long term implications on how players interact with their Meeroos, the rate at which they advance, the volume of regard they acquire, the speed of leveling, and it has made these elements, which were intended to reward a player for their efforts, rather obsolete. It has removed control of the game from us, and left us at the mercy of the autopetter. We're have to develop in response to it, rather than develop the vision we had originally. It is because of this, that we must now place restrictions on it's use. Some of you will be very unhappy about this, and we understand and are sympathetic. We ask that you understand, in the bigger picture, it has caused the game far more harm than good.

So, now I'll let you in on a little secret! I feel that it's important we offer full disclosure so that you fully understand where we're coming from. While in development, well before beta even, we had a milestone chart. This milestone chart included things we wanted to create as additions to the game. This is part of the reason we did not have an API. On our milestone chart was a Wee-Mee.

A Wee-Mee was a very small, butterfly winged cousin to the Meeroos. It did not need to be fed (It survived on flowers nectar) and it would not breed. However, it was a major part of our game. Intended to be a little player apprentice, the Wee-Mee would fly around and collect treasures and pet your meeroos for you. Essentially, it would tend your Meeroos for you, - but not in the same way an autopetter has. The Wee-Mee itself required some interaction and energy to complete it's tasks. Also, the Regard store was going to populate with Wee-Mee merchandise. Clothes, accessories, attachments, and later on would adapt to updates. It could be completely customized by a player to represent their interests and styles, while be relevant and beneficial to their game.

While in development on this, shortly after release, we saw the first round of third party treasure finders make their way to the marketplace. We have an absolutely brilliant, business savvy community who recognized the need and filled it before we had finished development. We revisited the drawing board, recognizing that half of the purpose of the Wee-Mee had been made redundant. During this time we also started dealing with other issues, such as theft and game exploitation, and Levio began working fervently to recode some aspects of the game which had resulted in unexpected and unintended gameplay (The lottery!). Because Levio was working on stabilizing the core game, we contracted someone else to code what became the Primbie Bird so that we had a shorter development period and could have something available in the Regard store, which had no content at that point. At the same time, we contracted another third party to creat the seasons calendar while Levio continues to close security holes. That's when the community notified us of the issue with unusually high birthrates of some Meeroos, which ultimately revealed a new exploit. We reacted to that with an investigation and unfortunately had to take action that resulted in banning players for cheating.

A Day later, the AutoPetter arrived. I met with the player responsible for creating it and explained that taking and manipulating our own scripts in order to craft their product was not only unethical and illegal, but damaging the game. He agreed to remove it. Then he changed his mind and put it back up for sale. So we had to DMCA it because it was using Levio's code removed from the HUD, which was achieved by the player going to a region where scripts were inactive (So our security script could not trigger) and removing the content. Linden Lab responded by removing it, and as soon as they did, the player put it up again.. and again.. and again. Until finally they put up a revised auto petter that required the purchaser to take apart the HUD themselves in order to make their own using our scripts. Hundreds upon hundreds of players did just that.

Suddenly we found ourselves in a huge dilemma. We understood many of these player had no idea they were doing anything wrong. They had been used as a weapon against us by the creator. They didn't deserve to suffer as a result. They'd spent their valuable lindens in good faith. If we prevented it from working, hundreds of player would be outraged having lost their money. If we didn't react to it, players who never purchased or used the autopetter would find themselves forever behind in the game, and their own progress and rate of advancement penalized for NOT having purchased one. That was us, between a rock and a hard place, and no matter what we did, we knew someone would be unhappy.

We set the Wee-Mee aside completely, skipped over it and moved toward the Dryad part of the storyline. We were now behind in development. We are only a three person core team, and despite our best efforts, there are only 24 hours in a day. We were losing precious time. We released the Dryads so that Levio could begin working on a HUD update that would not be transferable and had hair on the HUD and other features the community had been requesting. During this period, players were acquiring hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions of regard, automating the entire game and all the benefits regard had to offer. In response we put in a script that would alert the player when an autopetter was detected and thwart their usage of it. This sent support tickets through the roof as players were getting autobanned by the security in the HUD when they would try to take it apart to make a new autopetter thinking their had broken. We responded by unbanning them, with the reminder that taking apart any of the Meeroos products was considered tampering and against our terms of service. All Meeroos content is usable with left click and a menu.

So, because of the volume of usage and consequential misuse of the game and all of the developmental distractions in has caused, we felt we needed to regain control of the game before it was to late. This is why, after much deliberation, we have decided to ban all autopetters from the game beginning with the release of a revised EULA on Monday. Continued usage of an autopetter from that point onward will be regarded as cheating. We will issue a warning to any player found using it. A second offense will result in a reset of their regard total to Zero. A third offense will invoke a permanent ban from the game. We need to restore our vision for what the game was intended to be, and not allow it to be manipulated and diminished in the form it has.

Thank you all for your patience while we determined the best avenue to take on this issue.