My request for a "Hipster Whale" game series was rejected because "a game series is not necessary", but there are many other game series that are far less "necessary" than this. There is a Hill Top Racing series (and they even have Category Extension?), a Hypixel Series (literally not even a game), a Eddynardo series (web games), numerous ROM hack series, numerous fan game series, and even game series with zero players. Rules aren't applied consistently.
Rules have gotten stricter over the years. These series may have been added before those rule changes, and established series won't be deleted retroactively.
And Slither.io just got a category extension! I was told we couldn't have one for Crossy Road for the same reasons that game would have, if not worse.
Little League Word Series Baseball with a combined 8 players across 3 games got added three weeks ago. Hipster Whale games would have over 500 across 4 already on this site and 2 that can be added, not to mention any category extensions. These games have over 300 million downloads and are some of the most influential mobile games of all time.
This site isn’t making game series based on developer.
The rules on src adding new series is much stricter because of how series mods can bypass things like the game request feature, and add new games directly. This is a problem especially for games like Minecraft (56 games), Hypixel (18), Roblox (232), etc, as they tend to 'spam' new boards / games with low effort. That's why the staff is both reluctant to make new series, and even add moderators to series with none (because there is little reason for them to even exist).
As mentioned already by others above, the requirements for a series have gotten stricter as time went on, and we no longer make a series based off of developers, only games that are an actual series of games. At first when I saw this post I wanted to look and see how many "Hipster Whale" Games were on the site to see why a series may have been denied, but I couldn't find any games called Hipster Whale or any of your runs that would match it, it was only after that I realized it was a developer not a game title. But yes, series requests have gotten more strict as well as game requests, since the mods of those can do certain things to bypass other things and also just as a way to keep the site de-cluttered. Also the other 2 examples you gave of series were approved because the games follow a series and do not just share a developer.
All of those games are in the same universe as based off of artstyle, all characters are shared, and 3 of them have the same name, Crossy Road.
@Dare Almost certainly not, the site moderators just aren't going to accept series connected by developer if they're not part of an actual series or franchise. Accepted series requests nowadays aren't common. If you want to connect the community of your various games, consider merging the various Discord servers that exist.
@Dare If you resubmit the series under the "Hipster Whale" name, it'll probably get rejected again since, as @Quivico mentioned, the site is currently not accepting developer series.
If you resubmit the series under the "Crossy Road" name however, while also explaining that all three games have thesame name and have shared artstyle and characters, I don't see why it could get rejected.
The only caveat would be that it'll probably be added without a mod, since the admins are reluctant to add series mods due to series mods being able to bypass the request process and being able to add games/categories that might otherwise have been rejected.