I wanted to wait a few days before I put down my thoughts on this. I was going to talk about it on stream as well, but I ended up not streaming Friday. Or Monday. And this has sat in my drafts over the weekend.

Background:
On Thursday, October 1, a new "Information" blog post was put out in the Star Stable News.

A Message from Our CEO Jamie!

While I won't copy the letter in its entirety here, I have a screenshot saved just in case something happens to the blog.

It's no secret that for the last several months (years), Star Stable has had some things going on behind the scenes that the players aren't wholly privy to, including investigations about Star Coin pricing and purchase through time-limited practices. We also know that in early September, there was an approximate 20% reduction to the Star Stable Entertainment staff.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that this is nothing, but I'm also not going to catastrophize and claim it's the end. Companies undergo staffing reductions for a whole host of reasons, from the absolutely benign to "oh shit, we are bleeding cash."

It could just be corporate speak, but interim CEO Jamie mentions in both the LinkedIn and Blog posts that this is not the end of the game. They are going to continue developing and improving the game, but starting early 2027 (and they've promised more information to come on what they see for the game going forward), they will not be doing weekly updates.

If you've followed my streams and videos for any amount of time, you will know this is something I have commented on before, and that I didn't think the pace was sustainable. As far as I'm aware, basically no other MMO updates weekly. (Don't come at me with some edge case. :V) There will be bug fixes that could wait until they restart the servers for their weekly reset, but the amount of content (regardless of what the players think of the quality), is A Freaking Lot.

Most games you're lucky to get content quarterly.

In the Information blog, CEO Jamie mentions they're approaching their 800th update. The game just turned 15, and for essentially 14 of those years, they've had weekly updates.

The community has been spoiled with content, and it's hard not to understand why.

With the blogs on the Star Stable website only really going back to 2023, I can't see historical update content, and I can only go off of what I see from creators who were around back then. I'm hesitant to go by someone just saying "Well, we used to get...!" because human memory is often a questionable thing, at best.

What I can see now, beyond any speculations I have, is the community response when it's a "calm" update week.

Some of y'all don't make yourselves look good.

I have been struggling to put into words for a few months now my thoughts on entitlement in the community. I don't think I have to with the way the SSO Instagram comments get. It tends to speak for itself.

If I gave you a week-by-week update list here, it'd balloon the length of this. Suffice to say, compared to the other MMO I'm currently playing (Elder Scrolls Online)... SSO blows it out of the water with sheer quantity of updates.

But I think the (general) player base's constant asking for more is confusing quantity and quality. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but expecting them both all the time isn't healthy for anyone, players or the people working on the game.

And yes, please remember: there are actual humans working on this game. They're not immune to the complaining. I'm sure it wears on them to feel like it's never "good" enough to make the player base happy.

And yes, players, you're allowed to complain (I do often), but if you're doing it publicly? Try to keep it constructive, not accusatory, and try not to catastrophize. You can dislike something, but rather than just complain, explain why it affects you so strongly.

Coming back to quantity vs quality, one repeated thing I see in those Instagram comments, is a call for more story.

Again, I am not going to lay out the list of "weekly stuff that's happened since January 2026" (but there's the News page). Even if, right now, you go back to see just the ROADMAPS, since then, the earliest one for 2026 is on page 2. For all post categories, it's page 9, row 2 (of 3), column 3 (of 3).

I know Marchenghast was back in February/April, but we haven't forgotten how extensive that was, right? I know it's like 20-30 minutes to do the dailies, depending on how quick you/your horse is, but... That was still a big update.

A whole new zone, a lot of NPCs, a lot of new quests. And some hints/connections to the main story that still make me say "... Marchenghast was main story territory in side quest branding." Or it's at least filling in some gaps.

I am an altaholic. I make alts. I have (mumbles number) of accounts. I have gone "OH!" several times while playing those new accounts, because "Hey, that connects!" And not just vaguely, but in direct references.

Marchenghast was a big undertaking.

This year has been packed with Stuff™. Every month has had something going on.

When the heck was SSE supposed to squeeze in new "main story branded" quests? Especially a quest chain that's long enough to satisfy the complainers, while still maintaining their festival schedule, with the addition of the 15th Anniversary festival this year? Western Festival already started early to accommodate that.

I have already said elsewhere that I don't think running a Trailblazer during a festival is a good idea. They heard the community feedback from the Trailblazer changes earlier this year, and they heard the feedback from the community about the removal of festival currency for Western Festival.

Game Master Em points out in the September 2026 blog that they were too far into production to revert that change for Galloper's Keep.

I would like for players to keep in mind: these things are not being worked on right before they go live. Datamining has found references to things for Winter Festival 2026 already. (Which doesn't surprise me, stores near me already have Christmas stuff out for sale. >:| Leave Halloween alone, you corporate ba-)

This is pure speculation, but I would guess the reason the Trailblazer changes from that first test at restricting how many points a player could earn each day stayed, despite community feedback, for the one that followed was because their production pipeline was too tight, even before the staffing reduction.

Again, that's my speculation. I don't know for certain, I can't because I'm just a horse nerd sitting at a computer in New Hampshire. But it doesn't feel like a far stretch, especially with this line from CEO Jamie: "You have all seen and felt the outcome of creating content quickly, under tight production timelines, and with little room to iterate."

Players (general) can ask a lot from game companies, and those people within. This isn't just "Do this thing" that might not be something the game engine can even do, but it's having updates that are always Quality and Quantity.

Let me give you an example, using Elder Scrolls Online since that studio has also had a year with some deep staffing cuts. And this is not to say the situations are identical, they're absolutely not, but there are some common threads that I find useful for the comparison.

When I look at the Elder Scrolls Online News page, and filter for JUST events, excluding Crown sales and promotions, there are 9 posts since January for "Events." There are 25 for "Previews" and a lot of these would be, in SSO's news style, combined into the Roadmap or Game Blog posts.

Just in 2026 alone, ZeniMax Online Studios (ZOS, the developer of ESO), has lost more than 200 employees. ZOS's new studio co-head explicitly said they were committed to continuing to grow the game, not just maintaining it. He also acknowledged that updates originally promised for 2026 would be pushed into 2027, and possibly beyond.

While no one can say that either of these games will ultimately survive, I want to point out that their leadership, in both cases, is committed to trying to make sure they do.

I want to highlight Jamie's closing words from the October 1 blog post: "There is a long life still in front of Star Stable Online, but only if we focus on the core of what made it great to begin with.

This way of working and releasing will be new territory for us, but we know we’re not on this journey alone. You, our players, matter most, and we want Jorvik to continue being the place you call home. I ask for your patience and support as we go through these changes together, as I truly believe this is the fresh restart Star Stable Online needs."

Folks, we have to support the humans who work at Star Stable Entertainment. Because they're just that: humans.

The blog post mentions a lot of things people have been asking for, but I think we need to remember that, with a relatively small team working on this game (at least in comparison to the big numbers for some of the other big MMOs) that there is only so much they can do. They only have so many hours in a day, and we shouldn't expect them to sacrifice their work-life balance for pixel horses.