Romhacking.net moves to news only, database and file archive to Internet Archive

I'm not deeply involved in the RHDN community, but have been somewhere nearby for over a decade. I have no vested interest in defending Nightcrawler (the owner/creator of the site). But I feel I should do so as the existing commentary surrounding this event makes out as if there were two equally justifiable positions at odds.

The creator and owner (since 2005!) of the website has explained their situation. They:

- cited reasons for their general desire to move away from the site in recent years. Namely increasing costs (financial, work, effort) to maintain the site in the face of ever increasing legal threats, bots/scraping, etc.. This has been public knowledge -- in general -- for over a year, at least.

- made a relatively specific accusation ~~ being doxxed by the "insiders" that had offered and took steps to take over as successor/s

- explained the perfectly rational (in the face of the alleged mistreatment) decision to wind down operation of the site and cut ties with the extended ("second-party"?) community channels

- provided reliable, free, public access to the unique (community created) data hosted on the site -- through archive.org

- kept the site up and stated their intention to do so as a read-only archive

- posted on the front page of the site informing everybody of all of this

This is a good move. They are making good decisions in a bad situation.

The opposing view being (over re-)presented is that the owner of site didn't accept some offer of help at some point in the last decade and as the only person with full control over the site, ... they had full control over the site.

Of course, having such a large repository of cultural artifacts at the mercy of an individual isn't a good long-term plan. Wanting to avoid catastrophe should something terrible happen is perfectly reasonable.

However, the news is that this current reality is the one where the disaster (loss of the unique data) has been averted.

Romhacking.net is a titan of the homebrew and rom hacking community. Your work will not be forgotten and you will be sorely missed.

> I discovered a most dishonest and hate filled group. I learned that I had been dehumanized for a very long time. My personal details had been given out. Secret deceitful plots had been made to cut me out, and drop a bomb like I am a target to destroy. My family has seen this and after discussion, we are immediately ceasing all related site operations. We are cutting ties to Discord and Twitter social media outlets, and will have no further contact with these individuals. Lines were crossed. I had hoped this community especially would have learned from what happened to Near. This behavior is not OK for handling disagreements, miscommunication, anger, or anything else.

Wow. Strong claims.

> he existed as a single point of failure for the site and exerted iron-fisted control over community-created content, and categorically refused basically all offers of help over the last decade

Strong claims here too.

I don't know what to believe. But I've seen people try to steal others' work by calling the person an "iron-fisted dictator" and "single point of failure" before. I'm not saying that's what was attempted here, but it's not like it's exactly rare.

A sad day. Feels like the death of an old relative. Glad it was archived at least. Sorry to hear about the final blow up too...