Pour one out for a real one: the Ace Attorney Court Bot, one of the best bots on Twitter, is being forced to shut down after Twitter announced that it would be charging for access to its API. This affects a ton of bots, of course, including Hourly Hatsune Miku, Endless Screaming, and Monopoly Mermaid Monday, the loss of which will make the world a poorer place.
The cost of accessing the API from February 9th starts at — get this — $150 a month for up to 500 API requests, and an incredible $2,500 a month for up to 10,000 requests. Twitter bots can process several thousand API requests a day.
Ace Attorney Court Bot works like this: In the replies of any tweet you like, you can tag the account and it'll process the tweet in question and output it as a scene from Ace Attorney between Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth. You can also tag in the bot under a thread of replies and get them all put into a dramatic court scene with multiple characters!
However, there is the possibility that Ace Attorney Court Bot could still exist, as the owner — 25-year-old computer engineer Luis Mayo — is considering starting up a Patreon, which could cover the costs of API access. You can support Mayo on Ko-fi, too.
Let's have one last hurrah while this Twitter embed thing still works (caution: swearing):