[UPDATED] Devs' Corner: April 2025

It is deleted, yes.

I'm not sure some players would want the horses they sent there sold though. Some players sent their horses there knowing they wouldn't be sold. They may not have wanted them, but they didn't want them to go to someone else either.

I'm all for clearing up the safe haven horses, and/or removing the safe haven completely, since it's wasted storage, but I'm not sure how I feel about selling the horses from it. We wouldn't want to sell Retired Coats, since that would bring back deleted copies of the coats and totally crash the market. And I collect horses that were born in 2007, 2008 and 2009, there would be a surge of those too (theoretically, since that info isn't kept). Actually, the more I think about it, it would crash any market- diamond apples, companions, retired helio's rays, divines, etc. Don't get me wrong, I would *love* to get some of my safe haven horses back, but it just isn't realistic.

I would be up for allowing us to bring back certain horses that are account bound and couldn't be sold, but beyond that I don't think it's possible.

i'd love to know the percentage of people who sold their horses to safe haven, that did not want them resold.

i'm also baffled that howrse would consider what people would want. there are many things and issues that have been requested by players that appear to be ignored. yes, dev takes time, but it can also take years with no movement.

basically, if people do not want their horses and do not want them sold, then send them to heaven. heaven could be cleared out too. not all horses there can be revived with a pandora's box. huh, i just checked, it looks like my heaven sent horses are mostly gone.

howrse does not appear to worry if it crashes market on any type sales.

a way howrse could prevent flippers from profiting from the sale of safe haven horses is make them non resalable. there are hoarders who have no intention of selling these rare howrses--ever.

selling the more rare types would give others on the game the opportunity and ability to complete their collections. and howrse could make real money selling passes to help fund the research on why the lag exists.

prior to howrse stopping those who had access to another's account via co manage, there were dirty players who would empty a trusting player's account into safe haven or dump them into direct sales for 500e. very glad that was stopped. .

opening safe haven to auctions sales could give former owners an opportunity to buy back their favourite pixels.

regarding deleting background info on howrses donated to ow, when i first discovered horses being given to ow, they had their stats. i guess things change.

moreover, why do we donate horses to ow? ow should be buying them from us for the same prices offered by safe haven.

ow's ec used to be available to look at. that has been removed. why?

I've personally Safe Haven'ed horses in the past when I deleted previous accounts and did so with the knowledge that they wouldn't be resold; these horses were ones I didn't want other people to have as they were personal to me and I wanted them to stay with the account in someway and didn't want to kill them/they were immortal, so I'd honestly be quite upset if I found out that they were being resold to the highest bidder.

This idea was put forward so often in the old ideas forum and was turned down for the following reasons - the details are deleted to clear server space, also because the majority of the horses, pre objective, were put their at the owners choice, something which should be respected.

read sec 6 of the terms of use.

it boils down to :we do not own or control any thing on the game. howrse can do what ever it wants with "our" horses/accounts.

if your account is deleted, there is no having the horses stay with the account. the account is gone. the pixels are now random. they may or may not (most likely) ever be seen again.

rather than safe havening horses, you don't want others to ever have a chance at owning the horses you have created/generated, it is best to just delete the account with the horses attached,

otherwise it is just stacking horses up in the safe haven and using the bandwidth.

Are you sure you want to place this horse in the Safe Haven? Be careful, you will not be able to retrieve it later...**but howrse can if it chooses to do that.

Im pretty sure one all the horse's details are deleted, they are gone permanently which would make it impossible to restore the horses, let alone that many. It clears server space while allowing players to still see the horses they placed in it. That, and it reduces the amount of useless horses that nobody wants/had a connection to.

Its a cool idea in concept but I doubt it could ever come to fruition

personally, i did not like seeing horses i placed in safe haven. most were uni duds. it was a reminder of fails.

also, if we are to discuss howrse respecting players, please consider and remember when unannounced it changed the gp on foundies for all breeds. players had invested time, passes money (real and equus) to create generations of non inbred horses NIB.

that decision was to placate new players to the game who didn't like that their new foundation horses could not keep up with players who had breeding horses for years.

the decision to change the foundation gp did not respect those NIB players, nor the breeders who had worked for years to get the gp up on the breed/s of their choice. .

It doesn't mean they have to disrespect players who made the choice to let get of their horses in a way they saw fit. I'm very aware of the GP change of the foundies and how it was handled, I also remember the backlash it caused, but I don't think it is a good comparison to make, mainly because the foundie GP change didn't change existing foundies or change something that the players had pre change, but buying from Safe Haven is literally taking from people who made a choice, which is a MASSIVE difference to making an overall change to the game.

In short, you're comparing a change that didn't hurt already existing horses to a change that would be a slap in the face to those that made a decision where they had the final say in where their horses ended up. In my opinion, Howrse suddenly allowing buying from the Safe Haven in any way would be theft, because those horses are still tied to the account that put them there, so therefore someone else's property.

the account is/was deleted. howrse owns everything. one can not steal what one already owns.

please provide proof/ copy a link to where it states that safe haven is forever that is written by howrse admin/owners, past or present.

try comparing it to the sale of your childhood home. would you have the right to demand years later that the current owner was not allowed to do renovations or tear it down? you moved out, they took over.

no, once the account is gone, it is gone. there is no claim to it. you might not like it, but it is a fact.

1. REALLY cool idea.
2. I think in the long run, wouldn't that add more bandwidth than save it? Even if only a very small percentage, say 1%, was purchased, that's still 15,132 more horses in the game...I'm guessing more like 5-10% will be bought though, which is up to 151,324...which...well, there's 18,238,902 horses in the game...I guess it's not that much, but it's something.
2.1 Also, of the whole safe haven was deleted, that's only 8% of the horses in game...and it's not even comparable in terms of data if most of the safe haven data is deleted.
2.2 Anyway, enough numbers lol. I guess ultimately, this might make some impact, but not that much, but it's still definitely something!
3. There's also the concern several players brought up about most of the information of the safe haven horses being deleted...which means they really can't be brought back as regular horses...
4. There's also the concern about the buying market...I think that in short term, it definitely will change things, but then the "gold rush" will be over, so to speak, and the "gold" will become rare and valuable again. And so, in the long run, it will be alright. Anyway, markets are dynamic changing systems... but really I think the question is not what the impact will be, but IF THIS IS EVEN POSSIBLE (due to much of the safe haven horse info being deleted).

----- HOWEVER -----
1. Here's a good point:

Not all people use the safe haven exclusively for unifails, however, I would agree that probably a LOT of horses in the safe haven are likely unifails. So if howrse DELETED all the safe haven UNIFAILS, I wonder how much space that would save... plus lol, I don't like seeing my unifails either...
2. I wonder if there's something else we could do to use (other than give them strokes) and/or clean out the horses in the safe haven...
3. I still like the idea of using the safe haven horses in an EVENT somehow. THAT is still a really cool fun idea and probably totally possible!

ULTIMATELY, howrse and the devs know what impact this could have on the data and software of the game and what is possible and not possible. It would be cool if they considered doing something new with the safe haven, cleaning it out, or using it in an event somehow!