Starting today, Dumping Grounds is now a Supporter feature.

Existing users are grandfathered and can still use Dump like they always did, although we might revisit this in the future if needed. New accounts will need Supporter status to upload to Dump and they will still be able to access existing files if their Supporter status expires.

We’ve also rolled out a bunch of other changes, mainly around new accounts and how we utilize third party anti-spam APIs. If you stumble into any bugs, message me with a description of what happened or email support@newgrounds.com if messaging isn't an option.

VPN users who were previously blocked from creating accounts should now be able to make accounts, however you may get flagged as potential spam when you try to post interactions to the site. If this happens, you will have the option to become a Supporter to validate yourself instantly as human.

We’ve re-enabled the registration gates on A-rated content, which had been disabled previously due to the high volume of new accounts and associated anti-spam API calls; hence the reshuffling of where we do spam checks. The incoming volume of new accounts is also why Dump storage needs to be throttled moving forward.

We are now enforcing email validation more heavily than in the past. If you are hitting any roadblock in the email validation process, email support@newgrounds.com and explain what is happening with as much detail as possible. Don’t forget to search ALL of your email folders for "newgrounds" first! NG doesn’t sell or share your email address or other personal info, btw.

I promise our next round of updates will be more glamorous and useful to everyone!

Other News

Our Best of September were announced on Friday!

@BrandyBuizel is organizing Tankmas ADVENTure 2022.

@MindChamber has announced Robot Day will be November 26th!

@itsreddqueen and @CommanderKuni are hosting an NG Cookbook Collab.

@EdSkudder was the Head of Story on the new Super Mario Movie.

This month is our Halloween Spooktacular, with prizes for the best spooky animation, games, art and music.

@SketchyTodd is hosting a Silly VS Spooky Art Collab.

Sad news: We learned Blounty passed away in August.

I recently posted a summary of art events from this year.

Madness Day was last month and there’s a lot to see and hear.

Ludum Dare was last weekend and we’d love to see your web games!

Dumping Ground changes make a lot of sense, that's a ton of hosting space to just give out for free to every user, must've been really raising server costs

Yeah, it's one of those things that is best kept under control, if we're ever gonna achieve balance between expenses vs revenue.

Im confused by the wording, here, does adult content require a login? Is this also a reaction to what happened to sevi's YouTube vid: https://twitter.com/Sevi____/status/1579225618054803456?t=aXWN6He0O56ps2zjyHTq_w

Im glad NG is gaining members but why so many new accounts all the sudden? This post makes it sound like another mass migration

Yeah crazy everybody had it for free for so long.

That is correct, viewing adult content requires a login now. This is unrelated to what happened to Sevi, it's something we had done previously but due to the large increase in sign-ups, we had to roll it back because the third party spam checks became too expensive. Today's update is why there are suddenly so many new accounts; a lot of people want to view adult content and now they need to make accounts.

I, for one, welcome our new horny friends

Appreciate the openness and regard to the impact this might have on users, Newgrounds cares! <3

BUT, there's still a couple positives to this! Login-gated A rated content is back, AND we have a new Supporter incentive!

From that part: a lot of people want to view adult content and now they need to make accounts.

This could sometimes make those guys search another platform to view 30 in romans without making an account.

Bold: You know what does it mean, right?

Me too, and hey, if you all need a "homework" folder...somethin' called NG Dump I wanna tell you about, just need Supporter ;P

Anti-spam protection? You nothing learned first time when you tried to stop our spam?

I do think the changes are fair enough and really good stuff.

After all, Newgrounds these days is run on purely donations at this point as Ad Revenue isn't really a thing anymore?(Idk I've been using Adblock all this time).

Also if many new accounts are signing up and posting, It seems like more and more people are getting tired of Twitter lmao.

Anyways, Good update Tom!

I never used the dumping ground anyway, I much prefer mediafire

Dumping grounds is very essential because if you're making a "team animation"(that means collab)

you can make the scenes and downloading the results to add to the collab animation, i am still confused:

the new dumping grounds update is 100% only for supporters? or still people could use it? 1% of course(that means 1 content only)

Currently, yup.

The Supporter purchasing page still says "Extended Dumping Grounds allocation" by the way!

Making note... Curious for feedback about something. I made a page in the Wiki that goes into more detail about Supporter features:

https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/help-information/supporter-upgrade

Do you think this would be a good replacement for the text that is currently on the Supporter page, or do you think it might be overkill?

Why? Mediafire links expire, Dump links don't

they do? huh, that' never happened to me. Even when downloading old UTAUs from like 2011.

One thing I've been wondering about lately is explicit thumbnails in the home page "Best New Games & Movies" sidebar. Seems like those should potentially be blurred or something (if on the home page), showing an "A" overlay and can perhaps be hovered over to be revealed.

It wasn't a big deal in the past, but nowadays pretty much every day, a lot of them have explicit thumbnails.

I only say this because ive clicked mediafire links that have expired

We've been kinda assuming that people who don't want to see those would disable A from their filters but maybe keeping the front page tidy regardless would be a better move.

Second this, I just have A content disabled, but I assume 99% on NG user's dont want to do that, and also do not want to unexpectedly see it on the front page

Here's another question then... If we offered an account-level option to blur adult thumbnails, would you want them only blurred on the front page but not on the hub pages, or would you be ok with them being blurred everywhere? Wonder if we would need it to be granular, like:

1) Don't Blur Adult Thumbnails

2) Blur Adult Thumbnails Everywhere

3) Blur Adult Thumbnails on Front Page Only

Good question, im sure people who come here for adult content can answer better, but i advise against blurring and recommend just maybe a grey banner that says "hover to reveal" or something. I imagine someone browsing NG at a public place, and if there is a bunch of blurred thumbnails it still looks like they are on some porn website

Im just trying to think about this particular NG user

are you kidding me

I like how visual and more in-depth the wiki page is but also like the snappy bullet points on the Supporter purchasing page. Somewhere in between, maybe?

LOL

Someday the time will come, I will definitely sign up for a paid subscription to Newgrounds!

I think the info provided with every perk is good, but it can also be condensed to make it simpler to look at with the ability to read into details if the reader wants to. An idea I have is that the page itself would show a bullet-point list of the perks, but then if you hover/click on one of the points - say, Exclusive Emotes - it can display a little window giving the details of that perk. I think it'd be a good way to provide more info on each perk without it cluttering the main page.

As for the main stuff in the post, I honestly don't mind and understand why the change to the Dumping Grounds is being implemented. I also kinda appreciate the A-rated content being at least blurred or accessible to people with accounts. I'm not into the A-rated stuff, but I think it's a good change that can definitely help in the long run. Maybe if people have the A-rated content turned on then it would unblur the thumbnails on the front page, but I do think an option to allow accounts to blur/unblur A-rated thumbnails is a good idea.