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Well-known ROMhacking resource (RomHacking.net <url>), dedicated to rom hacking, where all sorts of remakes, translations, corrections and experimental versions of games were published for about 20 years, announced its closure. The resource will remain read-only.
The huge ROMhacking collection, which includes both very little-known and mainstream games, will be saved. However, the site's founder, Nightcrawler, issued a statement expressing gratitude to the community, but condemned the actions of some of its members.
Nightcrawler says that the site has come a long way, and he personally misses the old days when ROMhacking was run by small groups of enthusiasts. Now the resource has much more features, but last year Nightcrawler wanted to wind down all business and tried to transfer site management to a small team of users who were ready to work on the resource. It was then, the site's creator writes, that he "discovered the most dishonest and hateful group" of people who tried to remove him from managing the site, harassed him and revealed his personal data.
"I found out that for a very long time I was dehumanized. My personal information was disclosed. There were secret devious plans to get rid of me and drop the bomb as if I were a target to be destroyed. My family saw all of this, and after a discussion, we decided to immediately curtail all site-related activity. We are breaking off communication with social networks (Discord and Twitter) and will no longer be in contact with these people. The line is passed, " writes Nightcrawler.
The founder of the site thanked the numerous employees and community members who have supported ROMhacking over the years, and said:: "I will remember the good times, laugh at the bad ones."
The site's database (with the exception of user accounts and profiles) has already been transferred to Internet Archive archivists. From August 1, 2024, only news posts and forums remain on ROMhacking, and everything else will be read-only. The official accounts of the resource on Twitter and Discord stopped working.
Gideon Zhi, owner of Time Capsule Games and a member of ROMhacking for more than 20 years, disagreed with the publication of Nightcrawler. Zhi admits that the site has technical debts, monetary costs, and its administrator cannot help but burn out.
However, according to Zhi, at the end of 2023, Nightcrawler was going to simply disable the resource, without preparing any archive and transmitting data. And the requirements for a possible successor, which were put forward by the founder of the site, Zhi calls " unrealistic by any standards." Then the community members tried to offer help, but nothing came of it.
"He [Nightcrawler] acted as a single point of failure for the site and controlled all community — generated content with an iron fist, as well as categorically rejecting almost any offers of help over the past decade," says Zhi.
So, last year the site was allegedly almost abandoned, after which interested community members united in Discord and tried to transfer the back-end of the resource to modern file storage and maintenance systems, including Amazon Web Services S3, but Nightcrawler abandoned these changes at the last minute. Zhi also claims that the volunteers who participated in these transformations never threatened Nightcrawler and did not try to dock it.
The administrator of the now-unofficial ROMhacking Discord server confirmed that relations between the founder of the resource and a group of enthusiasts were strained. However, the Discord server administrator also denies any threats or attempts to harass Nightcrawler by users.
The huge ROMhacking collection, which includes both very little-known and mainstream games, will be saved. However, the site's founder, Nightcrawler, issued a statement expressing gratitude to the community, but condemned the actions of some of its members.
Nightcrawler says that the site has come a long way, and he personally misses the old days when ROMhacking was run by small groups of enthusiasts. Now the resource has much more features, but last year Nightcrawler wanted to wind down all business and tried to transfer site management to a small team of users who were ready to work on the resource. It was then, the site's creator writes, that he "discovered the most dishonest and hateful group" of people who tried to remove him from managing the site, harassed him and revealed his personal data.
"I found out that for a very long time I was dehumanized. My personal information was disclosed. There were secret devious plans to get rid of me and drop the bomb as if I were a target to be destroyed. My family saw all of this, and after a discussion, we decided to immediately curtail all site-related activity. We are breaking off communication with social networks (Discord and Twitter) and will no longer be in contact with these people. The line is passed, " writes Nightcrawler.
The founder of the site thanked the numerous employees and community members who have supported ROMhacking over the years, and said:: "I will remember the good times, laugh at the bad ones."
The site's database (with the exception of user accounts and profiles) has already been transferred to Internet Archive archivists. From August 1, 2024, only news posts and forums remain on ROMhacking, and everything else will be read-only. The official accounts of the resource on Twitter and Discord stopped working.
Gideon Zhi, owner of Time Capsule Games and a member of ROMhacking for more than 20 years, disagreed with the publication of Nightcrawler. Zhi admits that the site has technical debts, monetary costs, and its administrator cannot help but burn out.
However, according to Zhi, at the end of 2023, Nightcrawler was going to simply disable the resource, without preparing any archive and transmitting data. And the requirements for a possible successor, which were put forward by the founder of the site, Zhi calls " unrealistic by any standards." Then the community members tried to offer help, but nothing came of it.
"He [Nightcrawler] acted as a single point of failure for the site and controlled all community — generated content with an iron fist, as well as categorically rejecting almost any offers of help over the past decade," says Zhi.
So, last year the site was allegedly almost abandoned, after which interested community members united in Discord and tried to transfer the back-end of the resource to modern file storage and maintenance systems, including Amazon Web Services S3, but Nightcrawler abandoned these changes at the last minute. Zhi also claims that the volunteers who participated in these transformations never threatened Nightcrawler and did not try to dock it.
The administrator of the now-unofficial ROMhacking Discord server confirmed that relations between the founder of the resource and a group of enthusiasts were strained. However, the Discord server administrator also denies any threats or attempts to harass Nightcrawler by users.
