FeralHeart Unleashed

Fandom
Name(s):	FeralHeart Unleashed
Abbreviation(s):	FHU
Scope/Focus:	Video Games, Furry, Feral (fandom)
Date(s):	Released May 8th, 2022
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FeralHeart Unleashed (FHU) is an official FeralHeart server, sometimes considered to be a "sequel" to FeralHeart, started by ex-FeralHeart developer xSpirit in 2020. While neither the game's website nor Patreon list its date of creation anywhere, its Patreon has content as old as March 2020, and some FH forum members have said the game started in March as well. FHU's fandom is the same as the FeralHeart fandom, as they both revolve around the same game, however they are separate (sometimes opposing) communities.

Gameplay and Graphics

FeralHeart Unleashed is a furry-based social MMO, much like it's predecessor FeralHeart. The game follows roughly the same premise as FeralHeart, players may make a character (in this case a feline, canine, or ursidae), and explore the worlds. Where FeralHeart Unleashed and FeralHeart differ is the level of customization and game content. FeralHeart Unleashed is known for how highly customizable it's character creator is, providing new models, new markings, new hair types and character textures. FeralHeart Unleashed also has quests and achievements. The graphics are largely unchanged from it's originator, the original meshes packaged with the game are simply retextured and cleaned up.

FeralHeart Unleashed has a very strict copyright policy, set in place Oct 2020. The policy disallows the use or mimicry of any copyrighted material, even if a custom map simply copies a copyrighted location (such as a location in a film or game). This policy is strict by multiplayer video game standards, as other more popular games, for example VR Chat and Second Life, and online communities, like YouTube and RedBubble (which have some monetization), allow for some copyrighted content usage. This policy limits the custom content of its players, meaning all player-made custom content has to be original.

History

A game called Impressive Title was created by furry artist KovuLKD in 2008. Its server host, Razmirz, shut the server down in 2010 due to its numerous bugs and exploits. The Impressive Title version of the code was released for free, and many fans have used the code for their own private and public game servers. Then in 2011 KovuLKD released an updated version of the game under the new title FeralHeart. Despite the name change, this was the same game but heavily updated. Unlike the Impressive Title code, the FeralHeart code was and has been privately owned. Circa March 2020 KovuLKD gave permission to long-time FeralHeart member and moderator, xSpirit, to take control of the source code and create a separate server with it. This resulted in FeralHeart Unleased and FeralHeart Neighborhood. According to the FeralHeart Unleashed Confessions Tumblr blog, FHU is also moderated by other ex-members of FH.

Afterward the split in servers there may have been a falling out between the staff of FH and the staff of the newly created FHU/FHN community, as evident by the forum post titled Let's have a talk about censorship, which FH members discuss how threads by xSpirit were randomly being deleted. xSpirit and FHU mod Birdie ended up leaving the FH community, though in Birdie's case this may have been involuntary as they appeared banned.

To help with the upkeep of the FHU servers, the staff set up a FHU Patreon. The only way to access the official FHU community Discord is through a $3 pledge microtransaction, leaving players who are minors or without a subscription locked to just the in-game chat and forums.

In August 2022 xSpirit left and gave the game to Rappa. As of March 17th, 2023, the FeralHeart Unleashed development team has shown off a single preview image for the potential character animation changes coming with the shift to Unreal Engine 4. Other than that, development updates have been very quiet and the future remains uncertain.

Fandom

Just like FeralHeart, FeralHeart Unleashed is based out of the furry and feral fandom, meaning both have heavy overlap with those communities. Outside of that, Warrior Cats and The Lion King are popular topics of roleplay within the game, though many players have their own original roleplay plots. Characters are limited to big cats and wolves/dogs, as there are only two character creators, just like FH. Players may attempt to create custom textures that mimic other animals, but the bodies will still be feline or canine.

Similar to FH, FHU may have an issue with having a small player base and lack of activity, and players of FH agree. As of Dec 2020, staff have stated that this is because the game is so new and because they've yet to fully advertise it, as it is a work in progress. Some anons on the FHU confessions blog have discussed this issue and claimed that the emptiness of the game is due to too many players using the Patreon Discord chats instead of actually utilizing the game client for their roleplays. This may mean that most of the FHU community actually resides on Discord, not the game nor forums, despite the Discord being behind a paywall. There are still players who use the public and private maps to roleplay in game, though. There is a roleplay section on the forums but as of Dec 2020 there are no threads in it whatsoever, but there are adverts for roleplaying groups in a section titled "In-Game Roleplay & Group Advertisement."

Controversies and Criticisms

Both FeralHeart Unleashed and its mother-game FeralHeart have been at the center of several criticisms and controversial discussions, mostly surrounding their staff and staff decisions. However, whereas most of the accusations towards FH revolve around its server host Raz and its admin Sura, FHU has accumulated a large amount of serious accusations, most coming from the FeralHeart Unleashed Confession blog. Because the nature of the confession blog is to accept content from anonymous users it may be important to take FHU accusations with a grain of salt in a similar fashion to callout posts.

Some of the controversies are bulleted below.

• Let's have a talk about censorship discussion on the FH public forums. The staff of FeralHeart accused the staff of FeralHeart Unleashed, particularly FHU moderator Birdie, of purposefully starting drama in their unofficial Discord and their public forums. Opinions on the issue vary wildly. This thread solidified a split between FH and FHU staff, and showed that the FH staff may believe that the FHU staff were trying to purposefully upset the FH community to encourage them to move to FHU.

• Serious accusations from a Tumblr blog titled "feralheartunleashedconfessions", a blog which accepts anonymous "confessions" about the game, staff, and members, starting in December 2020. Claims range from accusations of money theft, homophobia, general unfriendliness, unreasonable bans, and some sexual allegations against the main game developer. Ispaghetts, a back-end dev on FHU, responded in a reblog of one of the submissions. They attempted to debunk many of the claims. Some players of the FH forums have stated publicly that they disbelieve many of the accusations, and that they believe they are likely made up, though at least one Tumblr blog's comments echo the confessions.

The last portion of the Ispaghetts' response to the accusations are below.

If you have any other claims you’d like fact checked or explained please DM me anytime, either here or on feralhe.art, our site. ESPECIALLY over the homophobia, predatory behavior, and scamming claims, we take that stuff seriously. Thank you for reading this wall of text. I hope this tumblr learns its lesson and stops with this ridiculousness; the community is dwindling so much, it’s not going to be a hard task to localize who posted this anyhow. I’m not even angry, or shocked, just.. disappointed someone would take the time to do this. Take care!

Ispaghetts

• On August 24th, creator xSpirit abruptly announced his resignation. This came as a shock to the community, and many questioned what the future of the game would look like now that they were without a programmer. In his place, FHU admin Rappa took ownership of the game. Rappa does not know how to code, and stated that they would be looking for a new programmer who was familiar was Ogre.

• In the months following xSpirit's departure, ex-moderator Sito created a nearly 200-page long document titled An Open Letter - FHU, detailing her grievances and experiences with its moderation team, specifically it's admin (and new owner of the game). This document was shared to the official FHU Discord server, and Rappa later responded with her own document.

Fanart

While FeralHeart Unleashed and FeralHeart are both based off the same game, the examples below come specifically from players of FeralHeart Unleashed. Players will often create custom textures to play as based on their feral characters, but not every character shared in their community is specific to the game itself. For example, it's common to place a small image of an original character into one's signature on the forum, but not every image displayed will be of a character that's played in the game.

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  holiday art

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  signature art

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  custom texture