The long-running, popular fan-translation and romhacking site ROMHacking.net has announced they’ve effectively ceased operations due to numerous issues.
While most ROM-related sites get shut down due to legal claims from original copyright holders (and the legal grey area of ROMs), ROMHacking.net is shutting down over increasing hosting costs and what appears to be internal drama with now former collaborators.
Originally launched back in 2005, ROMHacking.net became one of the main sources for fan-translations of Japan-only games, as well as all the odd romhacks that put new spins on classic games. The site has reportedly been in dire need of a codebase revamp and with its popularity, this led to increased hosting costs.
Furthermore, site owner/admin “Nightcrawler” posted a lengthy farewell message on the site detailing how they were hoping to hand off management of the site to someone else, possibly even just dumping the entire database and file archive to the general public for preservation’s sake.
An “internal group” suddenly emerged during this process at the end of last year, offering to help continue the site. After agreeing to their proposal and moving to hand off data and access, the site manager said they “discovered a most dishonest and hate filled group” that “had been dehumanizing” them for a “very long time.”
The site owner goes on to say their “personal details had been given out” and “deceitful plots had been made to cut them out”, effectively setting them up as a target to destroy in the process. After seeing this they decided to immediately cease all site-related operations.
This also meant cutting ties to their Discord and Twitter/X social media, run by separate teams, both of which rejected the allegations made by the site admin.
“Things have been rocky between site staff and discord staff for a while, and while discord staff have been exploring possible ways forward, likely including severing the relationship with the existing site and its ownership, we are deeply confused and disappointed by the accusation of doxxing and the implication that we’ve been threatening. We categorically reject these allegations,” the ROMHacking.net staff on Discord and Twitter/X said.
While the ROMHacking.net website will remain open for now, new submissions have been closed and the site will effectively be read-only. Any hosted downloads and images, though, will only remain “for as long as DarkSol, FCAndChill Calico will allow.” A full snapshot of the site is on Internet Archive, too.
