It’s finally over.

After all the delays and all the rubbish around this entire ordeal… The tangled mess that became File Front has ended.

…

…

With the original founders buying it from Ziff Davis to keep it open.

Here’s an excerpt from the announcement.

1) The March 24th announcement about FileFront suspending its operation was NOT an early April Fool’s joke.

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 suspend FileFront as an April Fool’s joke.

5) We are happy to be back!

You can read the full announcement here.

To make one point perfectly clear from our perspective… BWL will not be moving back unless something happens with our new host.  I’ve already paid more then $50 in fees to our host for premium service and another more then $50 to my bank in releated fees.

I can’t get nearly that much back.  And I’m going to be skipping a meal or two over the next two weeks until my next paycheck arrives.

This business with FileFront was very poorly managed from the outset.  We as hosted sites had zero warning that the site would close and take us with it.  We also had zero warning that a deal was in the works that might save the old site.

I’m happy to have our new host and be able to expand our functions a little.  Fictions for other games are now more then welcome here and we will be adding at least a handful of additional forums in the gaming section for other popular games our members play.

We have long since passed the point of no return here… and I think we will be better off for it.

Be sure to post suggestions in this thread.  And also indicate if you would be interested in tracking/writing news for one of these games/subjects.  We will choose five by the end of April.  Also, let me know if you have some “feature” that you would like to write about regularly.

We’re looking to take this site a little further then it has ever gone before.  Even so, FileFront continues to offer the best free file hosting option we have.  Therefore, I will continue to use their file services for our downloads.

UPDATE:

It’s official…

I’m sorry to give you the bad news guys, but due to lack of funding, filefront and all network sites will shut down this month (march, 30). Since you are hosted on xx.hl2files.com still, back up your files right away! I’m terrible sorry guys, but even I have been restriced of access on hl2files and I am also fired. This is all suddenly. Got any questions? Email me back.

Regards,
Skyrider

I’m working on setting up a new host now.  Please click the PayPal link in the right column and donate to help with the cost.  I’ll be paying some set up fees and don’t really have the money to spare.

Even something as small as $1 would help.

__________________________________

I haven’t payed as much attention to my filefront account lately as I used to…

Tonight I realized that I forgot to set up my catch-all email in my mail client, so I prepared the needed data and… found a bunch of emails that still went to my old friendlygarg.hl2files.com address.

Among them were notices that my Disorientation 2-part video was being deleted for inactivity and that the other disorientation ziped file was also being deleted for inactivity.

I then decided to check my account and make sure that those were the only files I had lost… then I noticed a link at the top of the page.

http://farewell.filefront.com/

Filefront is shutting down.

Oh dear.

At first, I thought about March 30th being 2 days before April Fools Day… but this could just as easily be legitimate and according to some site’s I have visited… it is legitimate.

If that is the case, this could be bad news for us.

Obviously, all my downloads are hosted on FileFront.   But also… and more importantly… HL2Files is a file-front network site.  That’s right, our host might also be a part of the shut down.  Which means we may need to find a new host.

This is bad timeing as I am low on funds at the moment and would rather pay for a host then go on skipping around the web as we have so often in the past.  Cat-Life, Garg Arena, our stories and comics, forums, and even our SF Studios hosted site will be in danger.

There is a rumor that UGO may be interested in purchasing filefront… but who knows.

Stay tuned… I will be looking at hosting options and am making backups now.  Just in case.

On a side note… one point I have noticed that still makes this suspicious to me is the lack of emails.  I have received no emails regarding a shut down of the file hosting nor a webmaster email warning of a site shut down.  That seems a little odd… but the host could just be careless.

[EDIT]
As far as preparations go, I’ll try to make the transition to a new host as easy as possible.  I’ll be making use of our steam group [ http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BWL ] and our ModDB Profiles…

http://www.moddb.com/groups/bwl-development

http://www.moddb.com/mods/cat-life

http://www.moddb.com/mods/gargarena

http://www.moddb.com/groups/special-forces-source