Preface

My story starts in 2020 when I heard about a rising platform called Guilded, a Discord competitor offering features like 500MB uploads and calendar channels. Curious, I joined Guilded in October 2020. At that point, I was mainly working on Discord bots but found the ecosystem saturated.

Seeing Guilded as a fresh opportunity, I joined despite its lack of an official API or community bots. Undeterred, I reverse-engineered the site to interact with the client API and created a library called @guildedjs/guilded.js (since guilded.js was already taken). It was a fun learning experience, and I managed to make it usable for other developers. Despite being in a gray area, a solid amount of people used my library for their projects. It was the reinforcement I needed to keep going.

Things started slowing down after a year or so, as I had covered most of the meaningful routes in the client API. It wasn’t until I received a DM from a staff member at Guilded, in July of 2021, about being invited to their early access for their official bot API. I was over the moon. The second I joined the early access, I started working on churning out the next version of guilded.js. And at that point, I was in communication with the owner of the guilded.js package on NPM and I was able to receive ownership of the package.

Soon, the library was in a state where I could create basic bots with it. It was then that I created the first moderation bot on Guilded, titled Yoki.

The Start of Yoki

Yoki originally started as a Discord moderation bot but never grew beyond a handful of servers. I decided that I would bring Yoki to Guilded as a way to test out the new API and see if this was a market that I could capture. I spent months building Yoki in the shadows, and in that time I was able to bring on board my wonderful partners IDKGoodName and ItzNxthaniel.

We released Yoki in July of 2022. It was a hit. We had over 100 servers using the bot within the first month and the growth never seemed to stop. We were ecstatic. We had a bot that was being used by people all over the platform. We were able to bring features that Discord bots had to Guilded, and we were able to do it in a way that was unique to Guilded.

We were so popular, that we were featured on Guilded’s Official API Announcement Video, Guilded’s Twitter, and Guilded’s Blog. We were also showcased in a couple community videos as well, even landing in a No Text To Speech video. At our peak, we had 4,500+ servers and over 200,000+ members under our management. We scanned over 50,000,000 messages, 100,000 images, and generated over 50,000 captchas.

The Problems

But, as time went on, we started to see the cracks in the platform. Guilded was a platform that was growing, but it was growing in a direction that left the bot API without a lot of needed features. The API had a serious amount of bugs, and at times this was a source of frustration. We were seeing bugs that were reported months ago still not fixed. We were seeing API features that were promised months ago still not delivered. We were seeing the platform stagnate.

But, then we saw a potential saving grace. Guilded was acquired by Roblox, one of the largest games on the planet. We were excited. We thought that this would be the change that Guilded needed. We thought this would give Guilded the capital needed to hire more engineers, to iterate more on the API and deliver much needed changes. We thought that this would be the change that would bring Guilded to the next level. We were even assured that “Guilded will continue to operate as an independent product group.”.

We had no idea how wrong we were.

Now, this leads us to May of 2024. Out of the blue, we were met with a blog post from Guilded that announced that you were required to have a Roblox account to use the platform. This felt like a dagger in the heart, because many, many people on the platform have never even played Roblox. The platform was advertised to us as a place for gamers and communities, not just Roblox users. This was a decision that was made without any community input, and it was a decision that was made without any warning.

We were blindsided.

This completely went against the previous assurance that Guilded would continue to operate as an independent product group. This was a direct integration that spoke volumes, saying “only Roblox users are welcome here”. This was the final straw for us. The continuing problem regarding slow API features and bug fixes was one thing, but this was a complete disregard for the community that had been built up over the years. Guilded had lots of die-hard fans, one member even tattooed the mascot on their body. Other users gave up their Discord servers to move to Guilded, they made an investment in Guilded that it would be a safe space for their members. We all gave years of our lives to this platform, promoting it free of charge, and it was all thrown away in an instant.

We decided that we could not continue to support a platform that was so willing to throw away its community. The same community that made it popular in the first place. To be clear, we have nothing against Guilded itself. We love the platform, the staff, and we love the community that we have built up. But, if Roblox is willing to make decisions like these that completely shatter the existing users in favor of the bottom line, then we cannot continue to support it.

The End

We made the difficult decision on July 1st, 2024 that we were shutting Yoki down. After 2 years of hard work, we had to say goodbye to our project. This followed in solidarity with a lot of the other moderation bots on the platform, like Parrot, Server Guard, and EcoNuker. Many other bots followed suit. These were some of the most popular bots on the platform, serving a large number of communities. We estimate around 10,000+ servers are now going to be without a moderation bot. This was a heartbreaking decision to make. I had spent two years of my life making this bot, and it was coming to an end.

We had a wonderful community that we had built up, and we had to say goodbye to them. We had to say goodbye to the platform that we had grown to love. We had to say goodbye to the project that we had poured our hearts into.

Something I’ve learned from this experience is that you can’t always predict the future. You have to cherish the things you have, the experiences you have, the people you meet. Because you don’t know when it will all come to an end. Another thing is that you have to stand up for what you believe in. If you see something that is wrong, you have to speak out against it. You have to make your voice heard. Even if it means making difficult decisions. Always remember that companies can change in an instant. In the end, they have to make the decision that they feel is best for them in the long run. In that same vein, you have to make the decisions that are best for you.

Acknowledgments

I want to extend a couple thank you’s to some individuals that made this journey possible.

• IDKGoodName and ItzNxthaniel - For being amazing partners and helping me build Yoki from the ground up. Thank you for being amazing people to work with.
• Shay - For helping document the client API, which was what originally started my journey with Guilded. Thank you for being a great friend.
• Dylan - For being so talented with web dev, and helping me build the site for Yoki and letting me bounce off ideas. Thank you for being a great friend.
• Seung - For being the Guilded staff member that helped me get into the early access for the bot API. For always being there to answer my questions and troubleshoot. Thank you for your kindness.
• Ryan - For helping me troubleshoot a lot of problems with Yoki.
• MagicBotMan - For listening to a lot of my API ramblings and being a cool guy to bounce ideas off of.
• Skillz4Killz and DaStormer - For helping me maintain Guilded.js and being amazing and knowledgeable developers.

Goodbye, Guilded.

It was an amazing journey, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But, it’s time to move on. It’s time to find a new platform to call home. It’s time to find a new project to work on. It’s time to say goodbye.

Goodbye, Guilded. It’s been a wild ride.

- Nico