I've been holding onto this news for a little while now, but it appears I can finally let the cat out of the bag...
A couple months ago, Rob
announced his intention to sell the site. Given his penchant over the years for repeatedly making noise about leaving Explorminate, shutting it down, etc., I took the announcement with my usual grain of salt. This time, however, it looks like he actually, finally went through with it. (In fairness, I know the guy has been dealing with a lot of stuff in his personal life, including severe mental health issues -- he's been pretty open about it -- so I'm not terribly surprised.)
Today (technically, yesterday now), it was
announced that Explorminate is now owned by a chap named Andy, though he's more commonly known by his online handle "BloodyBattleBrain", or just BBB. I've seen him around other strategy game-related communities the last few years, and seems like a decent guy.
Realistically, I expect nothing will significantly change for the site or the community (the Steam forums and Discord), at least not in the short-term. If anything, I suspect that things might even improve somewhat going forward. While Rob's passion for the 4x genre is undeniable, and I genuinely hope he'll continue to stick around in at least some capacity (even if it's only to participate in discussion), it's always been a bit...exhausting with him at the helm. I get that running any sort of community, including a gaming community, can be challenging (Brant can attest to this in spades!), but quite frankly, Rob has never exactly had the best temperament for it. Between his base personality, combined with whatever is going on in his personal life, his management "style" has always felt like a bit of a soap opera.
I'm hopeful that Andy/BBB will be more like Brant, Bawb, and/or
bbmike. Calm, stable leadership & stewardship is what Explorminate has always sorely lacked; fingers crossed this change in ownership ushers in exactly that.
