It's been a good run! A lovely community, an escape from pressure of the real world, and a good place to gather and discuss our favorite hobby (Video games!). But alas, it won't be forever.
Details of what's gonna happen
We launched the site with the goal of having it as much as user friendly as it possibly can. One of top goals that we have succeeded in implementing on this site, is to:
1) Prevent ads on site for registered users.
2) Prevent adfly links and ones that are similar to it, and allow only direct-linking.
While we have successfully been able to do that, it came at a cost:
1) While ads were only enabled for non-registered users/logged out users, those ads didn't bring enough to cover the site and server bills.
2) Allowing only direct-linking did not give much of an incentive to uploaders to join the site and upload their collection.
The uploaders you see on the site, do it for the love of the game sharing community. We thank them for that. This struggle is not new. We tried several ways to keep this site alive for more than a year now, ranging from a donator status, to finding sponsors for this site. Unfortunately, our efforts didn't work out the way we intended it to. The site grew larger with time, just like we hoped. As we grew, we needed more server power and cost went higher. Since this site was never about making any profit, we many times had to resort to paying for it out of our own pockets.
So it is with heavy heart that we have to announce. that our server, along with the site, will shutdown on Nov 26th (I'd really say the 25th at midnight.)
Message from Webby
Hey guys, Webby here. I'm gonna sit back in my rocking chair with my coffee and tell you some history behind **** for a spell.
I've been with this baby for quite some time, since we had two sites and before even that. Worked along side with Cha0s to make the VB sites possible. Not too long after we made those, perhaps a few months, I suggested we move to Xenforo to remove the security risk I saw in Vbullitin (which later caused the leak of 100s of thousands of users from another site I'm sure you're aware of). It was a good decision and made tit possible to run a bigger community on lower spec servers. As I'm sure our pioneer users remember, we had issues after we started growing larger. We are simply running on an OpenVZ shared VPS. lol that was fun!
We continued to hit the CPU load limit, experienced downtime like really bad, and the support wasn't helpful hardly at all!
We ran into bottlenecks with that setup, so we moved to a dedicated server which really made things nice and speedy!
But before we moved, we held a vote and wanted to merge the two sites into one. It would really help pave the way to expanding the speed and security of the website. Try watching for someone coming into your home from both the front and the back door at the same time. It's not easy and having split attention wasn't beneficial. We got the domain agreed on and merged the two sites! Painless really. Back to the server, Nothing was wrong with this new server other than the fact their support wasn't the best either. But no complaints since I knew my way around and hardly needed them other than a network latency issue
During all this time, **** was busy reaching out to his connections and expanding the user base, making this site more of a community centered environment, and not a simple "stop by, get what you want a leave" hassle. Superman also was working along side him too and they both really help build the community base we have. I was mainly in the background making sure the server didn't get hiccups, we were online, and that the users were safe. Hence the term webmaster
It was fun and I enjoy working on stuff like that.
Shortly later, both Cha0s and Superman would retire their coats, enjoy the real life, and be able to focus more on what they wanted.
Some time later, I focused on making the site more design friendly and found some themes/styles I liked. This task would be a hard one for me. Not so much with coding, but with design Aesthetics. I was no expert on this field and that was very clear.So I recruited my new staff team and appointed moderators. Rohul, Madridi, and Lycanroc became staff to help me both with the style and to help manage the site when I was away. Later on I would promote Rohul to be a fellow admin to help manage more advanced issues in the event I couldn't. We had to move to a new server within the last few months, and that would cost more than expected or more than we ever previously had to invest.
Which leads us to the present, that I'm not able to keep this us as the webmaster and time to hang up the coat as well. Time has been costly, as well as money out of pocket for the server and investments made into the site. I really love this community... It hurts to do this.
I hope everyone had a good time here, and I'm sorry it has to be this way.
Goodbye **** Team; enjoy this last month as we know it.
Details for DMCA notices being sent in
Since we are closing our doors within a month we ask you to understand that any content will be removed anyways far as we know with the current timeline. If ownership is transferred or changed, you will see a notice on the front in such an event. At that point, you should still have a clear path to send in your DMCA notices as always. However, If that isn't the case, then you'll see the forum and site go offline at the date mentioned.
To shoot down any rumors or speculation
* We aren't in any trouble, and that's not the reason of this shutdown. We've always complied with DMCA notices and worked alongside agencies who needed our help to remove content.
* We haven't been hacked or anything that would compromise the security of our users.
* We haven't been asked to shut down our website / forum. This is a choice I'm making based on circumstances and the shoes I'm having to fill. Read above if you want to understand better.
* We won't be accepting any offers from THAT ISO SITE for a possible merge, buy-out, or domain transfer.
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realtimesave:
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K3Nv2:
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BigOnYa:
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Psionic Roshambo:
