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Gamefront shutting down


Arthmoor

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http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/help-save-17-years-of-pc-game-modding-history/

 

I know most of us probably don't use the site, but I figured this was worth a mention for another reason. Mirroring your mods. Folks, THIS kind of thing is why you should be uploading mods to more than one site. When you put everything on a single site, like Nexus, you become subject to the possibility that one day they will be the ones making an announcement like this. Servers aren't cheap. Life isn't always fair. Shit happens and people often find they can't continue what they love doing. So spread yourselves out a bit.

 

Exclusivity may feel like you're being loyal, but in the end the only one it will ever hurt is you when a site goes belly up and all the stuff on it disappears forever.

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But there's also the chore of maintaining x-times the uploads and mod pages, just to reach 10% more people. Personally i'm a fan of relaxed redistrubution permissions. In the case any big modding site goes down, dedicated fans can jump in to preserve what they still deem valuable and find a new home. If nobody's around to save your old mods, they may as well stop to exist.

 

edit: i see that's exactly what is happening now :D I wonder if the GameFront staff couldn't just send modDB the database HDDs

I see the parent company is the same as the one behind the escapist. Yeah, financial troubles have been stirring up there for a while, rumor has it, that's one of the reasons Jim Sterling left/his contract wasn't extended.

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Tons of stuff is lost to history. It wouldn't get lost if they would stop blocking sites like the Wayback Machine from crawling and downloading the sites. Finding patches to older games is also becoming quite a chore with many sites closing. I fear patches scrolls will not be around much longer either.

 

I really wish they would make their databases available as bulk downloads on an ftp somewhere. It's just too much hassle to click through all the crap to download the files individually.

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But there's also the chore of maintaining x-times the uploads and mod pages, just to reach 10% more people.

It's not about reaching 10% more people though. It's about making sure you don't get caught out by an event like this.

Do you have any idea how many mods would be lost forever if something happened to Nexus and it somehow wasn't possible to archive the stuff?

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http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/help-save-17-years-of-pc-game-modding-history/

 

I know most of us probably don't use the site, but I figured this was worth a mention for another reason. Mirroring your mods. Folks, THIS kind of thing is why you should be uploading mods to more than one site. When you put everything on a single site, like Nexus, you become subject to the possibility that one day they will be the ones making an announcement like this. Servers aren't cheap. Life isn't always fair. Shit happens and people often find they can't continue what they love doing. So spread yourselves out a bit.

 

Exclusivity may feel like you're being loyal, but in the end the only one it will ever hurt is you when a site goes belly up and all the stuff on it disappears forever.

So another hosting site is shutting down, but this time they announced it before it happen.

 

Yes that's true, but I do know that GameFront was one of the favorite hosting site the Total War modding community were using for years and now the Total War community need to rely on Moddb instad since the closure of MegaUpload.

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Isn't there that Russian or Asian website that actually archived all of the nexus already ? ^^

 

Though that's still true... especially for people like me who keep unreleased mods on nexus just to use it as a personal free cloud :P (yes, i'm an awful person...)

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FYI  Drakkmore at GHF wanted to download a mod(s) on GameFront and got this and seeing such a warning is something you cannot ignore without risking your own security.

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Well that's no good, but I've heard stuff like that was the norm over there for awhile now anyway. The result of their last sale that's obviously falling apart now.

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It's usually patchers which are improperly flagged as viruses because Google can't recognize any compilers except gcc, and commercial ones. Many of these patchers are made in assembler, there are similar issues on other sites like VOGONS over such things.

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This sounds promising and I hope that Fliggerty manage to save all mods, well most mods, on GameFront.

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