Friday, June 19, 2009

June 19, 2009
Economic recession, whatever. It's just a word, and it's being repeated enough to scare some people. At any rate, IGN / Gamespy is shutting down ALL of it's free hosting. No idea what will happen to the comic: Flintlocke or Flint vs the horde. Or any of the planethalflife, planetquake etc subhosted sites. Or that dead site of mine for halflife crosshairs... Time will tell. How does ANY of this affect you, readers? Not so much really, but I felt like sharing ;) Here's the mail most of the account holders have received, myself included: Dear whoever, This is just a follow up/final reminder after our first communication to you on 26th-27th May that we are shutting down the IGN Hosting Services and to remind you that if you haven’t already, you need to migrate your files and database by 11.59 PM, 31st August 2009 (the “Cut-Off Date”), otherwise you will no longer have access or right to access or use any aspect of your site that IGN was hosting and IGN will have the right to delete and remove from our servers all aspects of your site. As set out in our Hosting Terms of Service, this is our second and final notice to you before we shut the IGN Hosting Services down. (A) Shutting Down of IGN Hosting After years of quality free hosting for gaming sites, we have decided to discontinue our free hosting services. We know that this will come as a shock and a disappointment to you; in this e-mail we will explain why this decision was made, when the shutdown will occur, and what the next steps are for the many hosted site owners who will be affected. The primary reason for the discontinuation of the free hosting is one of compatibility. At IGN, we are in the process of moving to a new data centre, and a number of our operations are incompatible with it, including the free hosting service. At this time we regretfully are not in a position to carry out the additional work needed to make the hosting service compatible. We are all extremely grateful for you having chosen us as your site's host, and as such want to do all that we can to make your transition to a new hosting provider as easy and seamless as possible. We will maintain the hosting service, with full technical support, up until the Cut Off Date (11.59 PM, 31st August 2009), giving you a further two months or so in order to organize a migration. Please note however that the Cut-Off Date is hard and fast - there will be no extension of the service after this date and backups of your databases and content etc. will not be maintained. Anything that you want to keep MUST be downloaded to your computer before the Cut-Off Date. Please note: if you don’t migrate your files and database by the Cut-Off Date, you will no longer have access or right to access or use any aspect of your site that IGN was hosting and IGN will have the right to delete and remove from our servers all aspects of your site. For more information, please see Section 21 of our Hosting Terms of Service. To summarize: The Hosting Services will end on 11.59 PM, August 31st, 2009. No backups or snapshots will be maintained after that date (download everything you wish to keep). You will no longer have access to your site or any aspects of it (content, assets, files etc.) after that date and we will remove/delete all such files from our servers. There is a number of alternative free webhosts you could investigate here: http://hosting.ign.com/faq.php. FAQs and guidance for migrating sites is available here: http://hosting.ign.com/faq.php. We are keen to help your migration go as smoothly as possible; contact us if you require any further information in connection with you site migration at: techsupport@gamespynetwork.com. File hosting at FilePlanet and Direct2Drive referral schemes may continue (with the latter including a 8% commission bonus). Again, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for contributing to the world's greatest network of independently owned gaming sites, and wish you all the best of luck should your site(s) continue at another host. Please, contact us (techsupport@gamespynetwork.com) if you have any questions in connection with the migration of your site. Nothing less than a pain in the sitting meat. So, if you haven't already downloaded ALL of Flintlocke before, you might want to consider doing it soon! Though, since the comic is technically an article of gamespy itself it should be safe in theory. The thing that annoys me the most of gamespy affiliated sites? That damn interstitial fullscreen advertisement that blocks your screen anytime you visit a page. Plus, gamespy has gotten slow as a slug on sea salt. Can't say I'll miss the hosting, but still hope most of PHL and alike will remain. They do have their uses. Anyone remember Quake 2 - Nighthunters? Awesome mod. Lots of fun.

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