Hey friends! A lot of you have asked how the credit system actually works — where those little numbers in your profile come from, what they're good for, and how to stack more. Here's the whole picture in one post.
What are credits?
Credits are the site's internal currency. You earn them by taking part in the community and spend them on fun stuff — playing games, downloading files, giving out awards, launching door games. Your balance lives on your profile and follows you everywhere on the site.
Everyone starts with 500 credits the moment they sign up, so you have enough to play around with from day one.
Ways to earn credits
Joining and sticking around
| What | Credits |
|---|---|
| Brand-new account sign-up bonus | 500 |
| Daily login bonus (once per calendar day) | 50 |
| Enabling two-factor authentication | 5,000 |
Yep — turning on 2FA pays you 5,000 credits on top of the security boost. That's the single biggest one-shot bonus on the site. Do it.
Being part of the conversation
| What | Credits |
|---|---|
| Starting a new forum thread | 250 |
| Posting a reply | 100 |
| Accepting a friend request | 250 (both sides) |
Sharing files and achievements
| What | Credits |
|---|---|
| Uploading a file | 500 per 5 KB of file size (minimum 500) |
| Unlocking any achievement | 250 each |
| Someone joins via your referral link | 500 |
Achievements include things like completing your profile, uploading an avatar, making your first post, accepting your first friend, recruiting users, enabling 2FA, and plenty more.
Role multipliers
If you're a moderator or admin, your earnings scale up a bit as a thank-you for the extra work:
- Moderator (role 3): 1.25x on all earnings
- Administrator (role 4): 1.5x
- Super Admin (role 5): 2x
These multipliers apply across the board — posts, replies, achievements, referrals, daily login, the lot.
Ways to spend credits
Games
| What | Cost |
|---|---|
| Guess the Byte, Retro Trivia, Hangman | 25 per play |
| C64 games in the browser | 25 per play |
| Door games (BBS-style) | 25 per launch |
Win a game and you earn credits back — often more than the play cost, depending on your score.
The file exchange
Downloading a file costs 1 credit per KB of file size. A 50 KB file is 50 credits; a 2 MB demo is about 2,000. Your first download of a file charges you; re-downloading is free.
Giving out awards
You can attach an award to any forum post — a small medal that shows up next to the post for everyone to see. The current award types and their costs:
- Bug Squasher — 3 credits
- Beating a Dead Horse — 3
- Not This Again — 3
- 5.25 Badge — 5
- ASCII Artist — 5
- Common Sense Award — 5
- Golden Floppy — 10
Award credits go to the site, not to the recipient — it's a pure appreciation gesture.
Checking your balance and history
Your balance appears in your header and on your profile. For a full transaction log — every earn and every spend — visit Account → Credit history. Every entry has a source (post, daily_login, download, game_play, etc.), so you can see exactly where the numbers came from.
A few useful tips
- Turn on 2FA. The 5,000-credit bonus is the fastest way to stack a meaningful balance, and it makes your account massively harder to steal.
- Don't forget to log in daily. Fifty credits every calendar day adds up to 18,250 a year for doing nothing.
- Upload things you love. A single 50 KB document earns you 5,000 credits. Music files, docs, ANSI art, SID tunes — all welcome in the file exchange.
- Invite a friend. Your referral link is in Account → Referrals. Every signup pays 500 and often triggers an achievement too.
- Post thoughtfully. A good thread earns more than a one-word reply because the thread bonus is 2.5x the reply bonus.
All the values above are tunable by admins via the site config — so numbers may shift over time as the economy settles. When anything big changes we'll post about it here.
That's the whole credit system in one place. Questions? Drop them below and we'll keep this thread up to date as things evolve.
— team_6502ish
