HGG Community Forums

Breed Characteristics
We are on track to launch our new Breed Characteristics next week. I don't have an exact day for you just yet but we are aiming for earlier in the week. As a reminder, these do NOT work like genes. They allow you to change what art assets your breeds use. You will be able to convert any horse you already own into the new art (once you purchase it) on the "Manage My Breeds" page.


You can buy and sell horses with Breed Characteristics you don't own but again these are not genes. They are inherited like your breed names. There will be full rules and examples given when this comes out so don't worry about it too much so don't worry to much about this yet, just know the art won't change just because a horse is sold.

We have finalized our pricing:
Each new Breed Characteristics will cost 25 USD per BC token.
or
You can purchase them for 1000 IVs per BC token.

BCs are purchased via a token system. You buy a generic BC token which you can then turn in for the Breed Characteristic of your choice.

You can already purchase these via IVs if you want to buy your tokens today (you will need 1 per BC) If you won a BC token last month it is already in your account

As a final general note, if this helps you plan any budgets. We will not be putting out any new genes for some time and will be instead focusing on creating new Breed Characteristics. There will 3 BC that come out now, hopefully, a Halloween fantasy one, and 3 more new ones for December sales.

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Subscription/Payment News
As I announced in the "Happy 17th Anniversary HAJ! Your very first celebration gift arrives today" post we are going to be rebuilding our payment system very soon. Here is what I posted then:

We will be rebuilding our payment processing system later this year. That will include improving how subscriptions are managed, and a price increase on subscriptions. We have never increased the price of any item in the game before and premium subscriptions are about 15 years old. Because of inflation, we get about 30% less money per sub than we used to. Our game is also a lot more expensive to run now because of the features we have added, hiring people, server cost increases, and our living expense increases because of inflation. The subscription should cost around 11 dollars if we straight inflation adjusted which I feel is too big of a jump. In the fall of this year we will be upping the price to $9.50. This will not impact already existing subscriptions. We will grandfather those in, so if you were contemplating a sub and want to get one before the price goes up later this year you should jump on that. You will also need a subscription to take full advantage of the new breed characteristics, though it will not be mandatory.

I have some more info now about grandfathering in now. You must have an active subscription before we change the price. Once the old price is removed from the upgrade page there will be no way to get it back. If you have to cancel your subscription for some reason you will not be able to create a new one at the old price. Sorry, I know it often happens through no fault of your own. However, anyone who creates a subscription at the new price, and has 6 or more months paid at the old price, will get a one-time thank gift of a BC token for switching to the new price.

So many of you have so kindly offered to voluntarily pay the increased price. You are absolutely amazing and we love you. Once the new price is available, you can cancel your old sub and make a new one and you will also get the free BC token gift. We are aiming for early fall to get this out but no guarantees, so I don't recommend waiting to buy this batch of BCs. There will be many more BCs coming to use your thank-you gift on.

The new payment system has the potential to accept Paypal, Venmo, Apple Pay, G Pay, Samsung Pay, and Click to Pay. I can not guarantee we will be able to get all of these working but we are going to try. It will also modernize our subscription processing and hopefully solve a lot of the frustrations it has caused.



Something else very important for you to know!
This is a chance at some point in 2024 we will be switching over from USD to Euros for all of our pricing. As we are moving to the EU next year, and all of our banking and living expenses will be in Euros, taking payments in euros will help stabilize our income. A stable income can mean huge quality of life benefits for our household of 4. The small difference in value between the Euro and the USD will also help us offset some of the inflation we have been hit by because we have not adjusted our prices. I don't have any details on this right now, and it is in no way guaranteed to happen but I want to be upfront and open that it is something we are discussing. You would not need to hold euros or anything like that though. It would all be handled for you automatically with in the payment processor.