As some of you might know or heard, as this news is slowly making it around Lego communities, the Lego.com General Gallery is closing down.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/gallery/?to=24&from=0
At this time we do not know if it is just the main gallery or if it will include all the galleries on Lego.com as a whole. This message has only appeared in the primary gallery, but I would not rule out the others being taken down as well. In addition, there are some rumors that it is only temporary and that an updated gallery will be released, but I have found no official source giving such statements. For now, this is the end.
I am sure that for many of you the Gallery being shut down is worthless to note. Like the Lego Message Boards, I imagine that if you looked at that gallery you see nothing other than spam and garbage. While not wrong, there is indeed much spam and barely Lego related content that the more creative side had been constantly battling against. There were plenty of decent and excellent MOCists that called it home, unsure and not trusting of other sites like MOCpages, Flickr, DA, etc. Even in the face of the Gallery’s doom, they still would rather not venture to such places. This gallery had better insurance of a nicer and friendlier, smaller and more connected, community than others. And for them and future MOCists not yet ready for the larger building communities to lose such a place, I feel sorry for them.
For those of us that were on that gallery as survivors of Lego Universe’s Creation Lab being shut down and saw the Lego Message Boards’ destruction, we knew this was only a matter of time. The fact that it has taken this long for the gallery to be shut down is amazing. The gallery may not have been exactly like how the Creation Lab was, but it was the closest thing we had. To see this gallery go is to see the final remnants of the Creation Lab experience also go, what little had remained. As well as the last piece of Lego.com from many childhoods that separated it from being nothing more than a store front.
So to those from the Gallery coming here and those being forced to move elsewhere to present your creations, I offer my condolences and wish you the best of luck. For those future MOCists and builders using the Lego Life app, I hope it is what you needed to get your start. That foot in the door to lead you to the great building communities out there.