In The Net update and takeover instructions

This last year of ITN,
has been very intense for me.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how one look at it, I’ve been working during the last year. Working like I never worked in my life.
I almost never worked from home, and most of my days off were cancelled due to the pandemic.
My work is on the health system, and unfortunately we were hit strong since last march, on a level that, forgive me, I don’t even want to talk about it.
I never wanted to tell about this, both because I didn’t want to bring in my private life what I had to endure at work, and because I didn’t want to make up excuses, but I am forced to at this point.
I basically never had days off, not even Saturdays and Sundays from late August till after the new year, and all my plans on working on ITN were off.

I get complaints from time to time because users send a message, or seek for assistance during day time and they think they should have a quick reply, like it would happen when enquiring a company. Unfortunately, I’m a person, not a company, this game is run as a hobby and this is the most I can do.
If you got a message from me during the day, or an issue sorted on daytime, it means that was my coffee break or my lunch break.
I well understand some people are working from home, and may assume that others are in the same situation, or worse are (sadly) out of work due to the pandemic, but that is not my case, quite the opposite.
And this is not all. On January 2020 we had a long down time, because the hosting company does not allow any more automated updates, so I had to run them manually, after getting home from work, and taking time from family, which is taking its toll to this day.
Before, with the automated update, I could freely move, and only step in when the system stopped, now I have to be on the PC every single time and it’s getting difficult.

As I said a few times, I am an accountant, I never had a coding lesson. What I know I’ve learned from Sonia, until she helped with the site (for the first 3 years). Everything else I learned asking on forums, or paying a professional coder to get things done.

I had some users offering help in recent years, in particular for the new website, and those experiences unfortunately didn’t end well. Although work started, it could not be completed for reasons I’ve been asked to keep private (as well as who the users were) and I stand to the promise I made, but that meant I ended up as the one left holding the short end of the stick.
I cannot force someone to work for free, so I ended up with empty hands and had to find a way to get a new site done, despite not knowing what to do and where to start.
What a coder does in 1 day, it takes a month for me to be done, and that is if I’m able to do it anyway.

Therefore I see myself in a situation where I cannot do more than what I do, which anyway is not enough to keep managers interested, or fulfill their expectations.

I surely take total blame for the things that don’t work.
I surely realize, that probably not only there’s a language barrier, but probably also a cultural one, that I underestimated before.
I obviously saw that on the transfer market as an example. I totally knew where we’d have ended up, that the market was going to die.
And I perfectly know what is the measure to fix it, there’s no doubt in my mind about that, there’s only one way. But I probably could not stress enough or get my message through, and ended up listening to all users opinions, and I only half acting, leading to the actual situation. I should have done what had to be done, despite raging protests; to avoid disappointing a few users, I ended up disappointing them all. And although, in my mind, I am the one that got the instruments to solve it, I take full blame for not doing it.
Who will come after me, can have the solution one click away and take all the credit.

I also saw that in my relationship with users. I tried to be as nice and helpful and understanding as possible, but that lead to making mistakes as well.
I recognize in hindsight that I was too lenient with some users during all these years, because that is my nature, trying to give second chances, closing an eye because after all life is hard for everyone, but obviously I was wrong. Talking with other gamemasters or admins of other games, they are extremely strict, and ban users much easier than I did, and although I didn’t want a game policed like in a regime, now I understand why they did. That took away so much time, energy, enthusiasm from me that could have been spent improving the game, that led to users complaints, and rightly so.

So I think the best solution for everyone is if I step aside, and let the game to be run by someone with more time, energy and skills than me. I do not care about the money I spent or I lost, I just care about the community and the game to carry on and thrive, and would be glad if someone or a group would be willing to take ITN forward.

I wished I had started this process 1 year ago, as I announced after the long ITN break on January 2020, but unfortunately all the events which happened since, slowed me with the new site work, privacy setup etc… Things are not finished yet, and I wanted to give out a free bug game, but at this point I feel I cannot wait any longer.

So, here are a few info to know, for those interested in taking over ITN:
The website is based on classic ASP architecture, and require a Windows hosting (which is already paid for some time anyway).
The game engine is based on Visual Basic. I use a virtual machine with all things needed which I can give complete and working as is.
So Visual Basic, ASP and HTML knowledge is required.
Both the website and the game engine are not bug free, and are only partially automated, so For any other info required, I’ll be glad to answer. Parties interested, please contact me at inthenet@itnsoccer.com.

A takeover would be discussed with interested parties, to take all the appropriate steps.

Anyway, I’m not letting this community die, I’ve not spent days, nights, thousands of euros to let it all go.
Despite of it all I will carry on running the game in a basic mode, only updates are guaranteed (sometime eventually postponed based on personal availability), and only very basic bug fixing or game improvements will be performed until a new owner is in place.