Romhacking.net is shut down

[Dark Jaguar]

Fortunately, this wasn't the result of some lawsuit, because if a site like Romhacking.net were to be taken down, then nexusmods would be next, as PC game mods and rom hacks are basically the same thing.  No, no it's far stupider than that.

The original owner has posted an "explanation" of the shutdown, but what it amounts to is that they refused to step down as owner and pass things along to new ownership due to bad blood between this owner and some of the people wondering why the switchover was taking so long.  There were disagreements about moving the site to newer tech and how best to achieve that, and some weird complaint about how to get the mods moved over to the new system that suggested the site owner wanted them physically mailed?

The collapse has one benefit, in that the whole site has been archived, so as long as that archive sticks around, the mods will still be available.  What a disappointment.  There's another person who's desperately trying to get THEIR mod hosting site to be the "replacement", but there are so very many things wrong with that replacement I won't even bother linking it.  Suffice it to say it's hosted using BLOG software and THAT owner is also operating a ROM hosting site which would definitely put that new mod site in the crosshairs for a shutdown in the same way that Switch emulator was shut down due to the creators actively promoting and trading Switch ROM links.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, this whole situation is so unfortunate, and such a weird mess... I don't understand why the guy running the site would act like that, making wild allegations that don't seem backed up by the facts while refusing to update RHDN's backend at all.  I like the site a lot and think the current, certainly '00s-style, site software works well for users, but it does have issues such as the limited file sizes and more (ie, why the site is not somewhere to go to find anything for CD games) and those weren't getting fixed.  And who knows how hard it was to update.  And now we know why nothing changed: the guy running the site refused to change anything whatsoever.  That doesn't seem like the best decision, but what can you do...

I very much hope that it is replaced by a similar site that uses its database.  The romhacking and translation patching scene needs somewhere to make it easy for people to find their work, after all, and that site is it.  If you want hacks for certain specific popular games you'd want to go do dedicated sites of course, such as the Mario World hacking hub  smwcentral.net or the Mario 64-focused romhacking.com, but for anything else for classic consoles and for translation and other hacks particularly, RHDN is the place to go.  Websites still have an important place in the world, we can't go 'meh just go to our Discord to find everything, if you can!'... both forms are important, It's been sad to see the slow abandonment of so much of the internet in favor of just social media sites and Youtube... those are great too but aren't the whole internet!  But anyway.

[Dark Jaguar]

There were SOME CD game mods on the site, such as a very nice mod to restore the interactive novels to Final Fantasy Tactics.

[Weltall]

As a member of their Discord, I got that alert once the RHDN Discord server spoke to their side of the situation. Though, it's not something I'm that familiar with, as I participated there very infrequently. It's a shame, because after almost 12 years, I'm only weeks away from publishing what will surely prove to be one of the true epics of the medium.

[Dark Jaguar]

Weltall don't worry, you can publish it on the equally big and major tentpole of gaming culture, Tendocity!  We're on Nintendo.com's links to fan sites!  Oh wait they don't do that any more do they?  We WERE there!  Once!  We did a giveaway- and I got a Kirby from it!