[UPDATED] Devs' Corner: May 2026

I make graphics and right now this is just extremely stressful. Over half my work is now useless, about 90% of them are square avatars and I'm sure if I used my circle ones, they wouldn't fit this template.
This decision was poorly thought over and had no care over what the players would think. All my work down the drain because someone thought circles (which you can make with the square template) would be cute.

I'd like to add for those saying that we can just crop our old avatars... it's not usually that simple.

Most players on here aren't graphics artists, so we've had other players make our avatars over the years. And by years, I mean literal years. I have avatars from a long time ago that I would still like to use, but it's not as simple as cropping it into a circle. These old avatars have borders, quotes, usernames, etc. that, for the most part, will look weird or be partially cropped out of a circle avatar. So sure, we can use old square ones, but there's no guarantee that it'll look good, and in most cases, it won't.

So players who have many avatars saved for their personal use are now back to square one since most, if not all, of their avatars no longer look good or don't work at all with this new format.

is anyone else seeing squares now? They're smaller than they used to be, but it looks like the actual avatars aren't being cropped any longer.

If we're going to be able to choose between circles and squares, then thank you to the administration. I assumed the feature was already finished (i.e. they wouldn't be working on it any longer) since it was already rolled out.

I prefer 120x120 as opposed to (what I'm assuming is) 100x100, but I'm glad to see the squares back and I hope they stay that way - or at least that we'll be able to choose between circles and squares. That would be a much better update, and one that I actually would support.

For a game that values player-made creations, I'm surprised they basically threw everyone's avatar creations down the drain.

They’ve fixed it to squares but the proportions are still off

I am! Definitely smaller. I prefer 120x120 as well I hope that gets fixed as well, but honestly I'll deal with smaller squares over circles any day.

Did howrse just... Listen to us?
I'm shocked

thank gosh the squares are back, little too small, but I'm not complaining

Thank you to the admins for listening - again, I would 100% support the introduction of circle avatars as long as players are given a *choice* between those and squares. So I'm hoping, if the circles come back, it'll be an option rather than our only choice.

It looks like it's been changed back to squares...mine's a square, and I'm seeing most other people's as a square, too. It's a shame, in my opinion, as I honestly thought the circles were very aesthetically pleasing and very pretty. Hopefully they introduce a feature to give you an option between square and circle.

I'm not going to get into any in depth conversations/arguments with anybody about who's opinion is correct...some of us hate the change, some of us love it, that's all there is to it...it's probably a good time to point out that this is a game about breeding, training, and competing with horses, not a graphics creation platform. If graphics is your focus on the game, that's perfectly fine, and you do you, but that's not the point of the game. I find it hard to believe that a simple change to the shape of our avatars would impact an active, competitive, pass purchasing player's game so much that they'd throw away their entire account and stop playing.