Taking down the GameFront files

[Dark0ne]

In response to post #67087281. #67088901 is also a reply to the same post.

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Kurnn wrote: Sure, companies needs to do hard calls every now and then, but seriously, GameFront could just say a big FU to any site that steals their product, without asking them.

As I understand it, GameFront came to nexus....not the other way around. Nexus has what 100.000 mods? And 20.000 active users a week?
Not a single mod site in the world even comes close.....Not one! Not even Bethesdas own Mod selling store.

I have nothing bad to say about the nexus staff. I dont even know what they do, but this site is here, growing, adding more content to the BIGGEST smash hit games in the industry.....along with a bunch of other games.

Nexus is the reason why brilliant players creates tools like Xedit, LOOT, Mator Smash, DynLODON, FNIS and even an Outfit studio.
These tools aren't some half baked try from a player to make some UI and have a feature to help mods.

These tools are on par with high end Server System tools and complexed software debugging and creation tools.
For FREE, with groups of people standing in line to help develop everything that players gets for free!

The nexus staff didn't do any tools, or mods, or teached players how to add content to games or enginee fixes etc.
The nexus is the Golden City in the vast Gaming wasteland . Where players, modders, leaders, artists, storytellers and people with nothing else then a huge freakin imagination.......all gathers here.

Nexus is one of the few major game sites that even have a functional forum/post system. TEXT post share info and discussions with thousands......instead of just the 20 who happen to be online in a chat program at the same time.

Gamefront, you lack the backbone to become anything bigger then what you are!

You have LOST, the best site to spread your products, the best way to gain the reputation you need, in order to sell big.
You made a short-term call, to avoid drama and bad reputation for not letting leacher sites, have the same conditions as
THE LARGES MOD COMMUNITY IN THE WORLD. FOR FREE!

I have been working in high-end IT Business for 20 years, and this call by Gamefront makes my top-10 list of moronic choices by "medium" sized companies, who always ends up getting aquired by the companies who made the opposite choices.

Pathetic.

Nexus staff, you rock.

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FileTrekker wrote: I'm sorry you feel that way. We're not a medium sized company though, we're just a handful of volunteers who built the site entirely for free. Just me, one web developer who does it entirely in his spare time, and a handful of other oldbies also doing it for free. We love Nexus too, incidentally and we have no issues here. We don't make or sell products, our site is as Nexus' is user generated and it's entirely for free to the end user. We're two peas in a pod in that respect.

Hope this helps.

Danny

I thank you for your vote of confidence, but I think you've gotten the wrong end of the stick here. There's no animosity with GameFront at all, and what they've done in the past and now has been perfectly reasonable. They were more than happy to allow us to continue to mirror their files for them, but unfortunately, there are other sites and users out there that lack the same understanding or respect. It is those sites and users who you should be directing your anger at. Unfortunately, some of them have been showing an utter disregard for the modding community for some time now.

Ultimately, for us, "losing" these files is really not a big deal. They were never "ours" to begin with and they accounted for less than 0.2% of our traffic in 2018. For me, it really was about not losing all the mods for games I grew up with and loved. Now that GameFront is back and those mods are all back as well, our backups were no longer required. It was an honour to be allowed to continue hosting those files with the GameFront staff's blessing, considering FileFront was one of the sites I was attempting to mimic when I first launched Morrowind Chronicles back in 2001. It's simply disappointing that others in the community are attempting to use this situation as a reason to further their own ends. Edited January 22, 2019 by Dark0ne

[magicgun]

while all of this kind of make sense, i'd like to point out that untill 5 minute ago, i had no ideas about the existance of those files or about gamefront. and i think the reason they represented a trafic lower than 0.2 % in 2018 is because they where simply not accessable in nexus mod from an user perspective. (to put what i' m saying into perspective. last time i checked the warcraft 3 nexus page, i think there was like 5 files? 7 files ? not 1800. [where not at hiveworkshop yet, but 1790 files is aloot of missing stuff. and thats just warcraft 3.] that and full steam instaler files and Castle Wolfenstein patch. and other exotic ancient files

 

my point -> if most people did not even know about this situation why even publicise it ? and in such a way . you could had just announced the revival of a past player in the modding community and not speak about the trolls. [don't feed the trolls ever please]. it look like I'm mumbling, but i think this had been handled in a hasty, but professional manner. [communication is good.transparency too.]

 

half out of context intervention -> since you,re bringing this up. can you tell us if there are any partnership planed with other platform or if there is any other skeleton/gold ingot in the closet ? this is making me unnaturally curious.

Edited January 23, 2019 by magicgun

[FallOutMike]

It is rather unfortunate that people used this situation to further themselves but it was rather selfless of you to save all of that work and host it, I'm just glad that GameFront has returned as they're some of the OG's in the form of file sharing.

[KnightBlade2]

In response to post #67091071.

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magicgun wrote: while all of this kind of make sense, i'd like to point out that untill 5 minute ago, i had no ideas about the existance of those files or about gamefront. and i think the reason they represented a trafic lower than 0.2 % in 2018 is because they where simply not accessable in nexus mod from an user perspective. (to put what i' m saying into perspective. last time i checked the warcraft 3 nexus page, i think there was like 5 files? 7 files ? not 1800. [where not at hiveworkshop yet, but 1790 files is aloot of missing stuff. and thats just warcraft 3.] that and full steam instaler files and Castle Wolfenstein patch. and other exotic ancient files

my point -> if most people did not even know about this situation why even publicise it ? and in such a way . you could had just announced the revival of a past player in the modding community and not speak about the trolls. [don't feed the trolls ever please]. it look like I'm mumbling, but i think this had been handled in a hasty, but professional manner. [communication is good.transparency too.]

half out of context intervention -> since you,re bringing this up. can you tell us if there are any partnership planed with other platform or if there is any other skeleton/gold ingot in the closet ? this is making me unnaturally curious.

"if most people did not even know about this situation why even publicise it ?"

I'll give you one reason why... Users like me. I just started playing Knights of the Old Republic and it's sequel. I used several mods I downloaded here that were archived from GameFront. When I came here today, they were gone. Without this explanation, I would have been left in the dark.

[LordAnorak]

In response to post #67080591. #67080751, #67080816, #67085126, #67085821, #67085986 are all replies on the same post.

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Moksha8088 wrote: That was a short-sighted decision on the part of GameFront and certainly not in the best long-term interest of their game users. A redundancy of game sources is good and as the saying goes, "it is not putting all your eggs in a single basket".

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Arthmoor wrote: This wasn't Gamefront being a jackass. It was whoever the other parties are that are the jackasses.

That said, I find it ironic that you say redundancy is good since so many people have this bizarre attitude that it either goes on Nexus or nobody gets it. A situation like this could be financially very bad for Nexus and could possibly get them shut down. Then where are all those "Nexus only" mods supposed to go if people never upload anywhere else?

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Dark0ne wrote: Yes, just to clarify again, this is not GameFront's fault and I understand why they've asked us to do this. It saves a lot of hassle for them and they're perfectly within their rights to do it, considering the backups are no longer required.

I'm sure some people in the community will be able to guess who might have caused these issues.

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FelesNoctis wrote: @Moksha8088
Something to also consider is that if they were to end up in a situation where they'll down again, it could essentially be a repeat of the last time: the Nexus could step in once more and offer to back things up like it did previously.

As for those Nexus Only mods, that's always seemed like such a strange concept to me. It's hard to imagine that anybody believes that actually works. Sure, maybe it acts as a deterrent on the more prominent mod-hosting locations and discourages people trying to sell someone else's content, but you'll find mods uploaded all the time to russian- chinese-/brazilian-/whatever sites without permission, there's the Wayback Machine, and methods of mod piracy are very easy to come by. Hell, I'll admit I used those resources a few times to find something important to me that had mysteriously disappeared with no explanation.

Regardless, redundancy is certainly a good thing, but the original agreement in a sense was just for archival purposes. Now that there's unscrupulous people trying to take advantage of the precedent set, things have changed. If you're incredibly concerned about losing mods that you love, you can always back them up yourself. Hell, I need to buy a new external drive for that exact reason. My current 4TB is full!

EDIT:
Oh man, and they updated their UI as well. When I stumbled across them a month or so ago their games list in the Files category wasn't even sorted alphabetically, and everything felt really clunky to navigate. Good on them!

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MadMikeyB wrote: We're constantly working on improving the UI and site as a whole, really glad you noticed the changes. :)

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FelesNoctis wrote: Oh absolutely! Sometimes the smallest changes can make the biggest impact, and things certainly feel smoother than the last time I was there, so great job! =D

EDIT:
Speaking of small things, apparently the Nexus has decided I'm not allowed to use emotes. Blah!

@FelesNoctis you likely didn't have the: Use emoticons checkbox checked ;)

[DaedalusMachina007]

As a modder myself, I always do my best to keep a private backup of ALL my mods and work that I do even if I host them elsewhere. The issue arises when people can no longer get in touch with the original modder due to e-mail/username changes or other issues like the jerkoff admins of RomHacking.net trying to act like they can dictate what 'allowable speech' is.

 

I'm thankful that Nexus here has quite a bit more leeway and doesn't instantly ban people because special snowflakes demand it to be so. Or maybe I haven't irritated the site admin that much ;)

 

I feel that multiple redundant backups are useful for modders and players alike. If you love mods then make your own backups as well just in case the original goes poof.

 

I appreciate that Nexus Mods seeks to preserve mod history and help save them from poofing off the internet. Kudos :)

[antistar]

One of my old mods (DM-Courtyard for UT3) hosted on GameFront was added to the Nexus in 2016 and I claimed control of it at the time. When I saw this news article I went and checked its Nexus page and it was still there, though the file itself was not.

 

I've since re-uploaded the file (and added its GameFront page as a mirror while I was at it), but I'm guessing some other people might be in the same situation; though they claimed the page for one of their mods, the files themselves may have been deleted. (As part of a big automatic database operation, presumably.) It might be a little late at this stage, but maybe something to look at?

 

Anyway, GameFront's recovery is great news. :)

[AlphiusRavenshadow]

I'm pleased to see GameFront back, and I hope that they and Nexus continue to have a positive relationship. :)

[Dark0ne]

In response to post #67097441.

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antistar wrote: One of my old mods (DM-Courtyard for UT3) hosted on GameFront was added to the Nexus in 2016 and I claimed control of it at the time. When I saw this news article I went and checked its Nexus page and it was still there, though the file itself was not.

I've since re-uploaded the file (and added its GameFront page as a mirror while I was at it), but I'm guessing some other people might be in the same situation; though they claimed the page for one of their mods, the files themselves may have been deleted. (As part of a big automatic database operation, presumably.) It might be a little late at this stage, but maybe something to look at?

Anyway, GameFront's recovery is great news. :)

Oops, thanks for letting us know. Those files were only hidden as part of the operation so it should be possible to reset that.

[Dragonbaern]

Oh for goodness sake... where there is good will, there will always be one who spits on it.

I don't understand people sometimes, I've never heard of GameFront myself, but I wish people would just leave things alone instead of getting all entitled just because an exception was made.

The mentality feels akin to giving a homeless person some food to help them survive, only for some random person to butt in and be like "Hey! you're giving away food for free! so it's my food too!".

Maybe this one is more accurate, "What's that? your house is being repossessed? let me keep your stuff safe in my garage until you get back on your feet." then some guy just busts through the door and is like "Hey! if they don't have a house to keep that stuff in then it belongs to everyone!" Dafuk?!

I tried to make this rant more comical then it was going to be, I'll be honest, I have no idea who these people are that have butted in to what Nexus did for GameFront, but just reading it pisses me off lol. :tongue: