As you may have heard, the Faithfunder website was hacked the end of last week. This means that for about the last 5 days or so, it has not been possible to donate to our Faithfunder event for Visions. Whenever someone would click the link to our event, they would be redirected to a malicious site instead. I have been in contact with the owners of Faithfunder and they are aware of the problem and working on it. Coincidentally, this is the first time their site has ever been hacked, just happened to be attacked during our event. Whenever someone clicks on the link to our event now they will no longer be directed to a malicious site, they will see an “This link has been reported as an attack page” banner instead. The problem is site wide at Faithfunder, and they are working fervently to correct the issue.
Anyone who has been following our posts on the FaceBook fan page knows that one of the many reasons we were trying to raise money for Visions is because we need to upgrade our server hardware. We’ve made some successful advances in development that will allow us to patch in more terrain for our seamless world. However our current server hardware can not handle the extra load. So we need money to upgrade the server.
There are other goals associated with our fund raising needs also. Most of our developers are interested in working on Visions full time also, but due to the financial demands of the cost of living, they are unable to spend as much time working on Visions as they would like because they must seek gainful employment elsewhere. We would like to generate enough donations to be able to graduate from being a volunteer team and instead pay them to work full time. (Funding to pay our developers is in the higher range goals however, and would still not be possible if we met only the minimum value of our Faithfunder goal.)Â And we would also like to upgrade our engine to be able to have the source code so that we can implement some tools for the core design goals of Visions that we are presently unable to create with the entry-level Indie engine. That upgrade costs $3000. So we do have some significant expenses associated with our goals that we were hoping the Faithfunder event would provide. That being said, please rest assured that we fully intend to keep working on Visions regardless of whether the Faithfunder event is fully funded or not.
In the end, we as Christians know that all the money in the world belongs to God. And we know that He will provide what we need, when we need it. In the meanwhile we must be faithful to continue doing the work He has given us to do, and we intend to do just that. If you feel prompted to donate to our cause, we have donation options right here on the Visions website, you don’t have to go through Faithfunder. If you would like to donate to us while the Faithfunder site is down, but still want to get one of the Faithfunder rewards, we will continue to honor those donations. We need a minimum order of 25 items for each of the USB drives so those are harder to keep track of without the Faithfunder counter, but we can easily honor the digital rewards in this unconventional format. Here are the prices for the digital items:
$20 for the digital download of the Visions Alpha client (that’s $10 off from the web store!) – delivered the same day usually, no later than the end of June.
$100 for the virtual brick, also called buy-a-brick (Have your name, or the name of a loved one, or your business engraved on a brick and placed in the game world.) Delivered within a week usually, possibly as soon as 3 days. No later than December.
$500 for the in-game memorial statue (Have your name, the name of a loved one, your business, or a short poem or text engraved on a plaque on a statue that will be placed in one of the starting cities. A dialog box will pop up when players get near the statue displaying the text on the plaque.) Delivered within a month, possibly as soon as a week. No later than December.
Just leave a note with your PayPal donation stating what you would like written on your virtual item and we will take care of the rest. We may contact you if we have any additional questions. You will be notified when the item is complete and sent a screenshot of it in the game world. It will not however be visible on the Alpha play server until the next update is patched through.
Make a ONE TIME donation at the stated amount to earn one of those rewards.
Or make your donation a monthly contribution for extra special perks as a Visions sponsor.
There is a song by Chris Tomlin that keeps coming to mind lately: The God of Angel Armies. This song has become my theme song the last few months. I know that nothing formed against us can stand because the God of angel armies is my friend and walking by my side. We are indeed holding on to God’s promises. And we are looking forward to the blessings that He will pour out on our team, and indeed on the entire Faithfunder website, for every attack that has been launched against us. We do not wish evil on the hacker(s), only that they would find Jesus and be saved and use their gifts for God instead of for evil. A prayer warrior who was praying for our team has asked God to compensate us 100 fold for the lost revenue resulting from this attack, and believe He will grant that request. Pray with us that God will turn this thing that was meant for evil into something Good, and that He will honor the prayers of our prayer warriors, and our team.
Isaiah 54:17 (KJV)
17 No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.