Hey everyone,

In 2006, I was barely into high school, and I had no idea this weird lawyer game whose forums I'd just signed up for would become a huge part of my life. Seven years ago, Phoenix Wright was disbarred I joined Court-Records' staff as a moderator. Two years later, Croik and Wooster asked me to take over as an admin (or, more accurately, I logged in to find my name green, but that's neither here nor there.) In the five years since then, I've learned a lot, seen several Ace Attorneys come and go, been lucky enough to host some contests that show off how talented this fandom is, met some great people, and had, uh, mixed success in keeping the site up to date.

Anyone who knows me IRL can attest that I have a bad habit of trying to handle everything in a project on my own, and it turns out that that's not a great model for running a site - especially when your free time to do so gradually vanishes over the years. My job has been taking up more and more of my time and energy, and I'm long past the point where I can give C-R the attention it deserves - and to be 100% honest, I'd like to use the free time I do have to focus more on creative work (writing and gamedev).

As of May 1st, I'm stepping back from C-R as a staff member. I won't be vanishing into the ether entirely - I'm sure I'll be around for new AA news and games - but I will be aiming to make a fairly clean break from working on the site.

But don't worry - one of the big lessons I learned as admin was that it takes a village, and I'm happy to say C-R has plenty of staff and community members who are stepping up to expand their roles and take over my duties:

• General Luigi will help run the forum and field questions and mail to C-R as a general admin (hence our little April Fools' gag).
• Bad Player will do much the same.
• Toatali will help as a mod here and on the Discord, manage our social media, and help post English AA news.
• Henke will continue to work on the redesign and backend of the site.
• Cyreb will continue to work on the redesign and frontend.
• Lumos will help manage copywriting assignments to get our missing content (episode summaries, etc.) written.
• No Comment, Spirati, and Thomasfish will be working to get the site updated with missing game assets, the results of the above copywriting, and so on.

And we're always open for more help - if there's an area you'd like to lend a hand, don't hesitate to reach out. In particular, it never hurts to have folks who can speak Japanese and keep an ear out for news (though we probably won't be hearing much about the next AA until TGS.)

You may notice there's no one "head admin" in the above, and that's very much by design. We each have our skills and passions, and after trying to juggle everything myself these past couple years, I'm of the firm belief that a lot more gets done when everyone's got their own area to oversee.

I can't thank the above staff enough for helping out all these years (even as we've had periods of nearly grinding to a halt) and continuing to do so after my departure. I'd also like to shout-out the staff of our shared Discord for keeping things there running smoothly and helping spearhead a lot of fun new projects (like this upcoming game jam!) - I think a lot of good stuff is going to come out of that in the years to come.

My only regret is that I haven't done more done to leave things in a little better shape for the new crew. Of course, the internet's a wildly different placei n 2018 than it was in 2006, so I'm realistic about how active C-R's forums are - but I do wish I could've been more on top of keeping the main site up-to-date, been more proactive in keeping the forums friendly and welcoming, and been able to drive the new redesign out. But I've got every confidence that our new+old team will do a much better job at all of that than I ever could alone.

If you'd like to keep in touch, I'll still be around the Discord, and you can find out more about what I'm up to on my Twitter (@boltgsr).

Thank you all for these past seven (or twelve!) years - it's been quite a ride.

-Bolt

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So...is...is the rebellion back on?

It's sad to see you go Bolt :( I still hope to catch great AA videos on your youtube from time to time (or what I ASSUME is your youtube channel).
Still I hope all your personal projects work out well enough and you get a lot of enjoyment from them! Thanks for all the great work you've put into CR!

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Thanks for everything you've done here Bolt! (and thanks for putting up with me as a young member constantly PMing you XD)
If you need a host for future OC Comps I'd love to help fill in the gaps!

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Wait, we no longer have a lead? This is news to me! And I was there for the secret internal talks!

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sleep well

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Admins? Moderators? Bah, they never last.
Sleep well old friend, the forums may be in new hands, but it's timeless protector is still here.

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toats be climbing the ladder, some day he'll make it to the top and own the site and have all of CRV3 as his own secret admin team

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Farewell, Bolt. We'll try not to collapse the forum for at least the next two months.
(Seriously though, you've been great.)

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Sleep well, Bolt. We'll all miss you :p

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Well, it's not like I'm dropping off the face of the Earth. Yet

Thanks for the kind words, y'all.

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Thanks for all the work you put in with this site!

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You're a great man, Bolt. You may still be alive, but your legacy will live on through all of us.

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Thanks for everything Bolt! Not that i was really active here as you can probably guess -more like a lurker- , but i always appreciated your work for this site -and AA community in general-

Good luck!

It's been an honor serving under you, Sir!

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And now the weirdest thing about this change, the fact that you won't be the one posting AA news, has already happened once. It will be odd getting used to that.

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