ROMHacking.net is closing down

[Shin FireyPaperMario]

Yesterday, ROMhacking.net made a final announcement that it's gonna close down forever. From what I read from the final announcement post, it was due to these reasons:

• Conflict among users
  
• Users whose ROM hack got featured in the front page bragging about how better they are
  
• Users drowning out other users in posts
  
• The owner getting threats and stuff by users who are angry
  

Here's the link if you want to more...


P.S. I guess that the price that these internet group's community that has gotten bigger & bigger over the years have to pay. I do hope the DYKG community doesn't suffer the same fate.

[QuadFactor]

Dang. That really sucks.

[Neon Streak]

Well...that was unexpected.

Let's hope someone makes backup files of all the ripping tools that were hosted on that site. Otherwise once it shuts down, they'll be lost forever.

[Barack Obama]

The link for the internet archive (where all files are hosted), is here:
https://archive.org/details/romhacking.net-20240801

It's less than 12 GB, therefore I'm currently downloading the entire archive.

For the closing of romhacking:
It was always my translation / patch / tool site of choice, too bad that their community brought it down.
Nobody here on the internet is a faceless robot, there are people with feelings behind the screens and written words can act like daggers.

Therefore I can understand that the owner doesn't want to host the site anymore, even if its closing saddens me.

[ofihombre7]

And I thought they would close it due to a copyright lawsuit from Nintendo due to hackroms of their games.
It would have been the straw that broke the camel's back for the closure.

[Ton]

What a loss. This is terrible. I hope someone picks up the torch.

[Barack Obama]

Good news, site and downloads will stay up even with everything being submitted to the internet archive:

This is just a minor follow-up. Many people have contacted me in regards to hosting or taking the site. ROMhacking.net runs on top of my web backend platform that other projects and clients use. For obvious security reasons, this is not something that can be given away or taken. It contributes to my livelihood. After what happened, I am no longer in a position to support any partnership options. As previously mentioned, I’ve already provided the site database and files to the Internet Archive. New efforts by others will be required. Anyone can pick things up and continue. What’s there is far more than I had when I started! I’m sure there are some innovators out there that can do the job!

What I can still do is redirect sectional links from RHDN to a new site. This would allow for the existing RHDN links all over the web to continue to be valid, and presumably allow editing to continue at their new location. I saw the promising ‘NeoRHDN’ project by NinCollin on the forum. They have the right idea with an upstanding approach. I look forward to seeing how it develops as a possible option.

As a continued courtesy, the site and downloads will remain online. News is open for project releases and updates. The forum is open for active ROM hacking projects.

Source: https://www.romhacking.net/

[MG12]

That place was super-useful, too. But, I understand the situation. At least we have a backup.

[Barack Obama]

Even two backups, internet archive + the site itself + maybe a third one, if NeoRHDN by NinCollin works out.

[CCAM]

This is absolutely incredible, I loved seeing those hacks on that page a long time ago.
Although at that time I could not play the game due to lack of hardware and peripheral capacity, although I did see quite a few hacks like those in the Mega Man game.

[DioShiba]

It's a bummer. Its amazing what people have been able to do with their hacks and it's sad that they won't be updating the site with any new files.

If anything it just feels like another shot to the underground side of gaming that didn't need to happen on top of the pressure from companies like Nintendo and how it handled the gray area of roms.

I do hope the DYKG community doesn't suffer the same fate.

Honestly I doubt that the community will go away any time soon, but speaking as someone who has been here since the break from Pixeltendo, having seen several different situations unfolded over the years because of what happened in the previous generation of TVGR and how several of the older members who were here mainly when this was simply The Spriters Resource I would say at this point the BBS forums will likely be phased out at bear minimum.

It's not a change I want to see personally but at this point I don't think there is much dodging it.