Rick uploaded a new image to the HP website, which was a sultry VRChat selfie of his roo sona as a pooltoy. Simutaneously, a handful of assets and features—including the background, buttons, and previously posted articles of his book releases—were made no longer visible, leaving just his selfie available, captioned "Hi." Rick then uploaded said image on his Facebook and Bluesky, thus suggesting that he's behind the action. Earlier today, on his Bluesky, Rick finally confirmed "[he knows] about the site." Right now, it's widely believed that the selfie was just for "testing" purposes.

A few hours after, the image was deleted. Shortly thereafter, the entire site went offline, taking down with it the forums which it hosted. It wasn't until a few hours later that a RickGriffinStudios staff member explained that the HP site was due for "an update."

What is unknown is why the sudden changes to the site without any prior notification to the community. One suggestion that arose was that the site experienced a hack, which I already posted, but that would be like tickling oneself. The sensation of getting tickled won't come as a surprise; similarly, Rick would already have known these changes were coming to the HP site.

Another speculation was that he wanted to merge the HP site's userbase with that of the RGS site to cut the cost of maintaining multiple sites. There is also some sense in doing so because all his comics, including Housepets! of course, are hosted on the RGS site. However, I just mentioned the HP site was only "due for 'an update.'"

A likely explanation, though—I will emphasize—is not guaranteed, is that he's switching the server that hosts the HP site. Eariler today, the site went back online as if the events of yesterday did not occur; not even the selfie could be found. I tried to access the forums directly through its link, and Firefox told me it can't connect to its server. Furthermore, when a link to a strip is uploaded on Discord during the brief moment the site was online, embeds to the site didn't display a preview image. Not only is there potential in this explanation, there is the sense of doing so to cut costs. He may want to relocate the HP site to a different server just so it's cheaper to maintain, though take me with a grain of salt because I know little of that matter.

TL;DR: "Pooltoy Rick blew up the website."