FileFront Closing Down

[The_Prophet]

What!? No!

 

[greasy85]

"sniffles" I loved that site i could always find what i wanted on it in regards to gaming stuff and the bandwidth was always great for me. damn economy

 

[cyber_andyy]

Damn one of the only free and decent site I can put files up on...gone!

 

[Chaos Marine]

Unholy Hades! This is staggering! I've been using Filefront since I tried to use fileplanet and almost destroyed my computer at how horrific it is.

;-;

We'll miss you filefront! I hope whoever allowed this to happen suffers for it.

 

[BDNeon]

Oh my goodness. Think of all those hard to find mods that don't exist anywhere else because their creators built them four years ago, put them on FileFront and then forgot about them... gone, gone forever.

Already foreseen this, I'm in the progress of backing up any and all mods, even slightly relevant, for the games I play. I'm only covering Battlefield 1942/Vietnam stuff ATM but if anyone else knows of something worth saving on FileFront lemme know. So far I've backed up Empires, Eve of Destruction, XWWII, Finnwars, Galactic Conquest, Gundam mod, Homefront, Hydroracers, Interstate 82, Opration Anubis, Recruit Snyders, Sengoku, Siege, Silent Heroes, Surreal, The Great War, Transformers, Dice City.... the list goes on and on.

If you don't recognize most of the stuff in this list, that's because the more well known mods, for Battlefield at least, are spread out across many hosting sites, and as such are not in danger.

I'm kind of hoping to revive interest in these mods by setting up community fight nights. They may be old, but they were and still are quite fun.

Is there like a central community or something for people doing what I'm doing, trying to save certain sections of Filefront?

 

[Zer_]

Oh my goodness. Think of all those hard to find mods that don't exist anywhere else because their creators built them four years ago, put them on FileFront and then forgot about them... gone, gone forever.

Already foreseen this, I'm in the progress of backing up any and all mods, even slightly relevant, for the games I play. I'm only covering Battlefield 1942/Vietnam stuff ATM but if anyone else knows of something worth saving on FileFront lemme know. So far I've backed up Empires, Eve of Destruction, XWWII, Finnwars, Galactic Conquest, Gundam mod, Homefront, Hydroracers, Interstate 82, Opration Anubis, Recruit Snyders, Sengoku, Siege, Silent Heroes, Surreal, The Great War, Transformers, Dice City.... the list goes on and on.

If you don't recognize most of the stuff in this list, that's because the more well known mods, for Battlefield at least, are spread out across many hosting sites, and as such are not in danger.

I'm kind of hoping to revive interest in these mods by setting up community fight nights. They may be old, but they were and still are quite fun.

Is there like a central community or something for people doing what I'm doing, trying to save certain sections of Filefront?

The Bridge Commander community has already backed up almost their entire file depository, it's great. They don't know where to re-host them but they'll find a solution I'm sure.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

gone forever?

Never!

I will not spend 20$ a month for Fileplanet!

*grr*

 

[mooncalf]

HotU, and now FileFront, it's been a bit of a grim start to the year for websites...

 

[Darkong]

This sucks, that's one of my favourite sites on the whole internet, damn stupid economy

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

What the FUCK?! I mean seriously what the fuck?

Can we donate or something? I have a paypal and a bank account waiting.

 

[Andy Chalk]

It's instinctive for "people like us" (or people like me, at least) to rail against the commercialization of things we've always taken for granted as free. I've waved that flag a few times over the years. But sooner or later some very basic economic facts have to prevail. It costs money to host that stuff, and if there's not enough money coming in to cover those costs, sooner or later the plugged gets pulled.

When times are good companies are more inclined to keep things like FileFront running at a loss because of the various intangible benefits they generates. But right now... the times, they are not good.

 

[the_tramp]

How the hell is this possible? I thought FileFront was incredibly popular because it didn't require registration... I refused to go to FilePlanet because of this very reason, always opting for FileFront instead.

 

[PhoenixFlame]

It's instinctive for "people like us" (or people like me, at least) to rail against the commercialization of things we've always taken for granted as free. I've waved that flag a few times over the years. But sooner or later some very basic economic facts have to prevail. It costs money to host that stuff, and if there's not enough money coming in to cover those costs, sooner or later the plugged gets pulled.

When times are good companies are more inclined to keep things like FileFront running at a loss because of the various intangible benefits they generates. But right now... the times, they are not good.

That's pretty much how I feel.

While Filefront was nice, I don't expect that it was generating the revenue it needed to defray the no doubt enormous bandwidth and hosting cost they had from all these people hosting files for free, especially with some of them being left up there for months at a time.

 

[dekkarax]

i see april fools a coming

It ends on March 30, 2009. About a day before April Fools in Australia.

Hopefully, this is a very cruel trick.

Hopefully...

Agh, at least I downloaded the Mandalorian mod for KotOR TSL...

It may well be, they did the exact same thing with some of the filefront category sites last year.

 

[rosseloh]

Can't say I used it too often (MMO players tend to not download large mods, what can I say), but it was awesome when I did.

RIP

 

[lornb]

Why oh why wasn't it Fileplanet... oh yeah, they charge for every-freaking-thing
Pfft, capitalism.

 

[BakaSmurf]

While it does indeed suck really badly that Filefront is being shutdown, it's very possible that every community for every hosted game is currently backing-up every mod/file in the database... At least the Knights of the Old Republic community is, as they have already downloaded and backed-up EVERY mod for the 2 games in the series, as confirmed by several KotOR files community members and mods =D.

Hell, they're already discussing possiblities for a new hosting site, so the KotOR fans can rest easy at least... Oh, and the Jedi Knight fans too, as the new site is already under construction and can be accessed, although there isn't much more than a simple chat feature...

 

[Vek]

AS of 7:55 AM Central Daylight US time Arpil 1st, Filefront is still up and serving downloads.

 

[Aura Guardian]

Because of this stupid war.

 

[CanadianWolverine]

Er, hey, everybody, check this out:

http://welcome.filefront.com/

FileFront has been acquired by the original founders of the site and will NOT be suspended as previously announced. This is NOT an April Fool's Joke.

After learning about Ziff Davis Media's plan to shut down FileFront at the end of March, the original founders of FileFront made the decision to buy it back from Ziff Davis Media.

We're happy to announce to the gaming community that as of today, April 1st, 2009, FileFront is a completely independent company again and is no longer part of Ziff Davis Media. All previously suspended services should be active and working again. We thank Ziff Davis Media for their cooperation and willingness to keep the site and community alive.

Due to the very unfortunate timing of this event and related announcements on March 24th and April 1st (April Fool's Day), we'd like to make it perfectly clear that:

1) The March 24th announcement about FileFront shutting down was NOT an early April Fool's joke and Ziff Davis Media had every intention of shutting down FileFront by the end of March.

2) This announcement about the original founders buying back FileFront from Ziff Davis Media is also NOT an April Fool's joke.

3) We're making this announcement on April 1st because the deal was completed today and we want to bring all services back online immediately.

4) We would NEVER shut down FileFront as an April Fool's joke.

5) We are happy to be back!

FileFront has existed in one form or another (originally as FileLeech and Voodoo Extreme's downloads) since 1997. In the last 12 years, FileFront has become the gaming community's most comprehensive and trafficked library hosting millions of files for thousands of games while requiring no registration and providing uncapped download speeds. We look forward to improving FileFront and serving the gaming community for years to come.

Welcome home. Game On!

Email us, [email protected]

This story just might need a update or a follow up story. Hmm, I wonder if I could become a one time news contributor...