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ROM hacking site shutting down after almost 20 years

Disputes about how to keep the site going led founder to archive and close it.

To condense the statement by founder Nightcrawler: the site had come a long way, he missed the early small-group days, there are more options now, and then, last year, he attempted to hand control over to a small internal group. "But he existed as a single point of failure for the site and exerted iron-fisted control over community-created content, and categorically refused basically all offers of help over the last decade," Zhi wrote. While ROM hacking, translation, demakes, and other game-altering work will certainly continue elsewhere, the gaming world has lost a kind of central depot for the most notable fixes, one with a community full of very experienced hackers.

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