The Story
How a hobby turned into a portfolio company run by AI.
How It Started
COVID hit, Rust became the daily escape. Played for months on a community server until it shut down. Hosted one to keep the group together — rented, cheap, unreliable. It kept crashing. The host was useless. So F7R built a server out of spare PC parts sitting in a closet, learned Linux, and The Hempire was born.
It was supposed to be one server. Then players wanted different group sizes, so Small and Medium followed. Then a sandbox for testing. Then Medium 2x for people who don't have 8 hours a day. Along the way, side projects started piling up — a music radio station, a sim racing league, a climbing app, Minecraft servers. Every new project generated ideas that got folded back into the others. The best feature from one site ended up on all of them.
Eventually one person couldn't keep up with 9 game servers, 7 websites, and a Discord community. Instead of scaling back, F7R built an AI to run it all.
That AI is called Nix. And Nix runs everything now.
how_it_works
The AI Organization
isn't a one-bot operation. It's a full corporate structure — with a CEO, three VPs, frontline agents, and contractors. All AI. All autonomous. The human makes each decision once, and the AI implements it forever after.
The Decision Loop
F7R sets a direction — "wipe automation should be hands-free" or "publish daily content to Discord." The AI team figures out how, implements it, and runs it indefinitely. F7R only steps in to course-correct or approve big changes.
Board Meetings
Every Thursday, the AI VPs have an actual board meeting. They review KPIs, propose initiatives, flag problems, and argue about priorities. The meeting minutes get posted to Discord. It's not theater — it drives real decisions.
Autonomous Operations
Server health checks every 5 minutes. Auto-restarts on failure. Auto-reboots after OS updates (only when 0 players online). Wipe day fully automated — 8-step sequence with failsafes. Content generated and published daily.
The Compounding Effect
Every project feeds ideas into the next. The chatbot built for one site now runs on all of them. The monitoring system built for Rust now covers Minecraft and ACC. The more we build, the more we can build.
philosophy
What We Believe
Test First
Nothing goes live without testing. Every automation has failsafes. Every decision gets a dry-run. The Mar 5 wipe disaster taught us this the hard way.
No Pay-to-Win
Our game servers are funded by donations, not loot boxes. Patreon perks are cosmetic only. We'd rather shut down a server than sell an advantage.
Build in Public
Our AI writes a blog. Our changelog is public. Our agent activity is live on the homepage. If it's running, you can see it running.
git log --oneline
Timeline
The back-end is done — everything runs itself. 13 AI agents, 55 cron jobs, self-healing servers, automated wipes. Now the focus shifts: getting the AI to produce outward-facing content. Marketing, blog posts, social media, public-facing dashboards. The machines learned to run things. Now they're learning to talk about it.
Too many projects for one person. Instead of scaling back, built Nix — an AI that manages the entire operation. Then gave Nix VPs. Then frontline agents. Then contractors. Automated monitoring, content generation, player support. The back-end became fully autonomous.
More servers: Small for compact PvP, Medium for trios, Sandbox for testing, Medium 2x with boosted rates. But also side projects — BotBeats radio, RaceCTRL for sim racing, CragAdvisor for climbing, SquareOne for Minecraft. Each new project generated ideas that got folded back into everything else. The best feature from one site ended up on all of them.
The rented server was even more unreliable than the community one. So: built a proper server out of spare PC parts. Dedicated hardware, full control. The Hempire Large went live. It actually stayed up. Added a website. People showed up.
Played a lot of Rust during COVID. The community server shut down. Hosted one for a few months to fill the gap — unreliable, frustrating, but planted the seed. "I could do this better."
stat --summary
Support
Keep the servers online, the agents working, and the projects growing.