I am posting this here, since this is essentially the only SOR community in existence right now, and I know many people here visit my site, are members there or have been over the years. This is going to be a long post so I apologise in advance.
As you may already be aware, the "Streets of Rage Online" site located at http://www.***/ has been shut down following a DMCA from Sega and HostGator.
I quote: "It has come to our attention that there is a large amount of copyrighted material inside or linked from your account. As this is a violation of both copyright law and our terms of service...." blah blah blah, "...will result in the immediate termination of your account."
They are referring to ROMs, OSTs, fangames, pretty much everything on the site
Where to go from here? Do I find another host? Is it worth it? I have the entire website and its forum SQL database all backed up on my hard drive, after all.
After much thought, I have come to the realisation that I no longer have the time to keep this site going, nor the money. For the past 5 years I have paid for hosting services, domain, and various other things for the site out of my own pocket, and developed the content out of a love for the games and community. And to be fair, this is not the first time I have gotten into legal trouble over the site.
Nowadays, my life has changed considerably from when I set the thing up, I am married with 2 children and I've just had to buy a new car after my old one was written off. On top of all that, I am planning to emigrate to the US in a couple of years time so I need to save as much money as possible. My bank account will only struggle with the additional expense of continuing to run the site, plus finding the time is becoming increasingly difficult. To be honest, maintaining this site has even put a strain on my personal relationships at times, and I'm not willing to allow this to happen in future. I have decided it is time for me to finally move on, after having been with this community since the very beginning.
So, with the 10th Anniversary of *** just around the corner, it is with regret that I must announce that I am officially retiring from the site, and the SOR community in general. I am hoping that someone will step forward between now and then and take over ownership of the website. I just feel as though I can no longer sustain this site on a level that is fair to our members. In life priorities change and so do people, I am hoping that I can pass *** to a new owner and through that action the site can continue. Let's be honest, that I probably am not the best person to run a huge project such as this. I know I am not popular with some people on this board because of my SOR novels and the way I have acted with regards to them in the past, and for that I can only apologise.
So I look out to you guys and hope that someone steps forward to take the *** website in a fresh and new direction. I have a few members that I would not mind handing the site over to, hopefully someone will volunteer.
I'll probably post here every now and then, so I won't be gone completely, but for the most part, this is goodbye.
Sincerely
Matthew Drury
Eidolon/bittermd/MattD
