【Belgium】

Gfycat is Belgiumbeing put down. The GIF-hosting platform has announced it will soon shut down, with its entire archive of funny GIFs and memes set to disappear in just under two months, on Sept. 1.

"The Gfycat service is being discontinued," reads a notice at the top of Gfycat's website. "Please save or delete your Gfycat content by visiting https://www.gfycat.com and logging in to your account. After September 1, 2023, all Gfycat content and data will be deleted from gfycat.com."

A spokesperson from Gfycat's parent company Snap confirmed the website's demise in a statement to Mashable.

"Snap is winding down support of Gfycat through gfycat.com," said the Snap spokesperson. "Anyone is able to save their content and content from the community for the next 60 days. Snapchatters are still able to search for and use GIFs in their conversations with friends."

Though this is official confirmation that Gfycat will soon be chasing mice in the sky, the platform's sad, slow descent has been evident for a while.

Users have reported numerous issues with the website over the past few months, including GIFs failing to upload, extended downtime, and silence from its team — assuming it still has one. Gfycat was down for five days when its security certificates expired in May, which is an extremely strong indicator that nobody was looking after the platform.

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As such, some Gfycat users already began working to archive or download their GIFs months ago, as well as searching for alternative GIF platforms.

UPDATE: Jul. 3, 2023, 5:48 p.m. AEST This article has been updated with a statement from Snap.

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