On March 3rd, the Leo Awards announced that they would be retiring its writer's award. This award started in 2018 by Thurston Howl Publishing and its founding was written about by Fred Patten that year. Thurston had announced their consolidation with another furry publisher, Fenris Publishing, in December of 2023.

The announcement listed several reasons for making this decision which included: lack of judges and lack of interest in the awards outside of the writers themselves.

Their full statement can be read below the fold and on social media.

Corgi Events LLC, a for-profit organization that operated five furry and two brony conventions, is to be disbanded according to a letter released by one of the conventions, AquatiFur, on February 12th. This follows a series of events and malfeasance concerns that started with an unusual email sent out to their Dealer’s Den mailing list. This letter, sent February 8th, alleged the LLC's sole-proprietor, Corey “Treble” Woods, was going to file for bankruptcy and bail on the organization.

This troubling news followed a stressful slate of Corgi Events running Sin City Murr Con’s première instance, just after Painted Desert Fur Con a month prior. Testimony from Boiler, a prior member of staff, shared their side of the story on this unrelenting demand on staff. It talked of a loss of faith in their organization’s leader due a spate of problematic behavior, including alleged drunkenness, prolonged response times to urgent financial matters, and delays in compensation. Tempers finally blew over into the public sphere when Treble terminated Koi from staff, a person who he admitted was running many day-to-day operations.

On the 26th of February, furry hookup app Howlr will be shuttering its services, after delisting its service from the Apple and Google Play application libraries. This was announced by the mascot of Howlr Lab: Sushi. In this message he encourages furs to move to a new social application Barq.Social as a replacement.

This application, which was released in the middle of 2018, was based on the human hook-up app named Grindr.

Full statement from Sushi below the fold:

FurCast, the self-proclaimed slow motion car crash that has occured over the past decade finally had the wreckage settle as it came to its conclusion on October 31st, 2020. On that Halloween it would air what would be its final episode of its 10 season run. This ending was not announced on air, but would be announced on their site on December 21st in a post titled It’s Time.

The first thing I want to say is that me, and everyone involved in the history of the production of this show, absolutely love you guys. There has been so much blood, sweat and tears over these years to try and bring you all happiness, help us all have fun, and bring people together.

This comes after 392 episodes of live broadcasts featuring furries that would discuss the week’s events for an 18+ audience, not afraid to take on adult topics with humor and laughs. The good news is that they plan on keeping the show archived on their site so that those who want to take a look back to old times can feel free to watch.

Fur Affinity’s flagship convention, FA: United, announced that it would be closing their doors due to COVID-19, permanently. While many other conventions have ‘suspended indefinitely’, or ‘canceled for 2020/2021’, this marks the first event to indicate a more definite suspension as a result of the pandemic.

Since it began in 2015, yiff.party has been a source of ire for artists whose income has been affected by it. The website uses web scraping software to extract files from Patreon, including those meant to be restricted to paid subscribers only, and made them publicly available, for free.

Kotaku interviewed Kadath and other artists about it in 2018. Although DMCA notices were sent, legal action was threatened by publishers like InkedFur, and Patreon promised to go to bat for its users, the site remained unassailed. Now, it’s closed, but not due to pressure from these sources.

Similar to Craiglist's decision to shut down its personal ads section, Dallas-Fort Worth-hosted furry dating service Pounced.org is down, pending interpretation of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which passed the U.S. Senate Wednesday.

FOSTA is intended to assist victims of sex trafficking, by allowing them to sue websites that facilitated their abuse. This gives previously undue liability to the platform for actions and content of third-party users; so Pounced.org is shutting down as a preventive measure while Kelar, the site's founder, seeks legal counsel.

The website, launched 15 years ago this month, hosted more than 13,000 ads from furries seeking friends, dates, or casual encounters within the fandom. Visitors are now directed to criticism of the bill from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights organization.

Update 03/26/18: The message on Pounced.org has been updated. Users can now read a much more in-depth explanation of the motivation for the shut-down, and concerns over the meaning of the bill:

The Funday Pawpet Show, a weekly staple of furry fandom, announced on September 12 that it will be ending its weekly broadcast, citing legal and logistical woes, particularly regarding the music industry.

We have come to a cross roads. Streaming video and music copyrights and licensing have become such a tangled mess of pain in the butt. The music industry has made it impossible for the little guy to do anything online. The costs, the bookkeeping, the constant upkeep of trying to keep from getting flagged… It is no longer a labor of love. We thank you all for nearly 18 years of puppet broadcasting support.

The loss of furry-friendly streaming service Furstre.am weighed on their decision. According to site creator Jacktail, the domain name was allowed to expire this month, as no current developers wished to take it on.

As noted in January, Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics (including Sonic Universe and Overdrive) have been delayed for unspecified reasons, with suspicion falling on a renewed contract dispute with SEGA.

Today, the official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account announced that SEGA of America were "parting ways" with Archie; promising that it was not "the end of Sonic in comics", but a "decision to take a different direction for the series that will be announced at a later date".

Not just fans, but current and former staff of the series were stunned by the news.

Welp, you didn't find it.

Website and forum devoted to "furry criticism" Vivisector has been unreachable since late June. As of the time of this article's writing, no one involved with maintaining the site has made a public announcement explaining why the site is unreachable, or even acknowledging that it is unreachable.

Two members of the site's Discord chat site, "Infovorr" and "coyotic", confirmed that the site's future is uncertain at best. Infovorr said:

We have no idea, the former owner took everything down and deleted himself from the net.
He said he'd be putting up a tarball of the site and its contents, but no one's seen or heard anything more.

coyotic was slightly more optimistic:

If we can get the database from the the former admin we'll rehost it at the same URL, the forums may or may not be locked forever afterward.

Vivisector has been called an "anti-furry" site by some, though most of the users were themselves furries. Other would call it a "drama" or "criticism" site; the latter being the site's own favored descriptor.

When people are bored, they may begin to dig through old bookmarks, go through old emails, and rustle through things with a slight sense of nostalgia. This is what brought about the discovery that the domain Furbid.ws was for sale.

Older furries may have used furry auction sites such as this site from years ago. Furries used auction sites almost exclusively for many years before many found that announcing commissions on FurAffinity got noticed more than an auction. FurBid was founded in 1999 when it was owned and run by Aatheus.

No information on why it is being sold is available, though WikiFur suggests it stopped its run December 5 of last year.

Erotic art site Wacky World of Erotic Cartoons has closed its doors, reportedly due to hosting costs. The imminent closure of the site was announced on its forums; both were taken offline just hours later, although a deadline of a week had been provided.

The WWoEC and its forums featured erotic depictions of American cartoon characters. It opened at the turn of the century, running as a partially paywalled site in its early years. Paid content later moved to LustToons (NSFW), which supported the WWoEC and its forums.

Palcomix and The Jab Archives have been proposed as alternative hosts for the site's artists.

Washington state furry convention RainFurrest 2016 has been cancelled, after failing to find a suitable venue for this year's event.

Historically based in Seattle, RainFurrest's former chair posted a strong warning last October that the acts of some of the 2704 attendees had jeopardized the convention's relationship with the Hilton airport hotel, resulting in uncertainty about future events.

Convention staff had previously posted apologizing for not giving more feedback, discussing rumors about a move to Spokane, and noting the board's decision to discuss contracts there. Last month saw posts about travel, hotels and recreation, and, on January 30, the opening of registration and the announcement that RainFurrest's parent organization was now a 501(c)(3) non-profit. All these posts have now been removed from the convention's website.

Update (20 Feb): Former con-chair buni has posted a post-mortem of the challenges faced in attempting to organize RainFurrest 2016.

See also: Hotel management doesn't care what your fursona is

Brazilian furry camping convention Abando is to end after next month's instance, according to a video posted by co-founder Reyres (translated by Puggy):

He basically explains that Abando became somewhat out of hand, it became way too expensive, Abando is a little event, and organized by few people, that do it just because they like it, but these things consume way too much time, effort, and in the case of this one, much, much money, since it requires the rental of an entire nature park, regardless of the places getting sold out or not.

Some of the staff, over the years, had to step out for many reasons; some are getting married, having children, moving away. And taking care of the event is a big task, not to mention that lately, it threatens the financial security of the whole staff.

On December 10th, 2015 FurNation announced that it will be closing its website after a string of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and staff's family, health, and career problems. The announcement marks the end of one of the original furry social networks.

It is a good time to reflect on what FurNation was, and what this loss means for the future of the fandom.