Hey everyone. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s time for us to transparently reach out to this community and try and figure out what the future of this place is.
We as a mod team owe you all an apology for what’s become of r/DDLC in recent years. Reported posts have gone ignored, messages to the mods have gone unread, and due to the way our automod was configured several years ago, countless posts from new and old users alike have been wrongfully removed. This is unacceptable -- but, to tell the truth, we’ve been at a loss for a solution for some time now. The majority of the mod team has been exhausted and burnt out of modding for years at this point due to the sheer amount of time that’s passed since we each first became mods. On the occasions where we’ve tried opening applications for new moderators, we’ve received very few applications -- and the problems compounded when burnout prevented us from reaching a consensus on which applications to accept. In fact, this very post was meant to be made nearly four months ago, but it took me this long to lock in and actually write the darn thing. In short, this place has been suffering from insufficient mod involvement, a problem only made worse by automod running unchecked.
From the bottom of my heart, to everyone affected by this, I apologize to you. It probably sounds silly to care this much about a subreddit about a nearly decade-old VN, but, to tell you the truth, DDLC and r/DDLC changed my life. I first played DDLC when I was 14 in 2018 during what ended up being a quite tumultuous time in my life, and the impact it had on me is one that will stay with me forever. I was soon after invited onto the moderator team thanks to one of the older mods taking a chance on me, and as a direct effect of that, I had the privilege of getting to meet so many wonderful people and learn so much about myself and others. While I don’t really frequent this subreddit much at all anymore these days, I can’t deny what it means to me. And you all deserve the same thing -- a welcoming community to share your appreciation of such a unique and innovative story. Someone close to me just the other day finished her first playthrough of DDLC, and it really reminded me how hard the game’s delivery of its themes and messages can hit even after all this time, and how there’s still room for new faces in this fanbase even today.
So, we’re turning it to you. We want you to air out all of your frustrations with the state of this subreddit, and we want to hear about everything you think could stand to be improved. Of course, the problem stands that most of the mod team simply isn’t in a position to moderate anymore. The last time new faces joined our team was in 2020. When I joined the team, I hadn’t even graduated middle school yet, but now I’m a college graduate. None of us are quite the same people we once were anymore, and it’s long past time for us to get some new blood to run this community. But, as mentioned earlier, the last two times we opened mod applications, we barely got any responses. I apologize in particular to those of you who applied when we asked in 2025 -- there were some good responses in there, but we did not handle those in a timely manner at all. If applications open again, we very much hope to hear from you again!
We’d also prefer for there to be some continuity from the older generation of mods to the newer generation -- it would be much easier if we could show some new faces the ropes and train them. So -- are any of you interested in helping to run this place? If we opened mod applications today, would enough of you submit an application? Or should we consider a different approach entirely for r/DDLC? Whatever the case is, we want to hear it.
