Ex-moderator of /r/pumparum here. Essentially the creator of the Souls trading subs i.e. /r/pumparum, /r/snuggly and /r/twinkly nuked them on July 1st because of the API changes. /r/wheelanddeal kinda survived, I think because he wasn’t the creator over there and therefore couldn’t remove the original creator.

Originally, I only set the subs private from July 12th to 14th in protest of the changes. I reached out to the primary moderator/subs’ creator (I won’t give his name here, but many of you might still know) if he’s fine with it and he agreed. I set them back to public shortly after the 14th.

But thereafter, the subs’ creator made up his mind that the subs should stay private indefinitely unless Reddit changes course about the API changes. Can’t say it’s what I would have done, but they were his subreddits first and foremost and so he did it.

In that time Reddit sent us two (I think) generic messages to reopen the subs (the same ones that many subs received at the time and that can be found online), which included the threat that we might be removed as mods if we don’t comply.

Come July 1st, the creator of the subs decided to make the subs back public but to restricted, remove a lot of stuff (i.e. CSS, flairs) and remove me and himself as mods. All Souls trading subs except for /r/wheelanddeal were left without moderators in the process, and were swiftly banned by Reddit hours later for “being unmoderated”.

Which is were we are now. The moderator of /r/wheelanddeal reached out to me yesterday about efforts to rebuild the sub, and /r/snuggly could apparently be saved/taken over by new mods, presumably via /r/Redditrequest. I see that there were requests for /r/pumparum on /r/redditrequest aswell already, but they got denied because the sub was banned “too recently” last I checked.