Romsite....why?!

[Alpha]

Well someone just pointed me to where you guys are coming from...

*******

 

Were not bashing you, were just posting our opinion and what we think about one thing about the site, not all of it. I even have a rule for it...

 

NO Bashing of Other Sites/Boards

 

We know that some of our posters might come from other competitive sites/forums, and for dissatisfaction towards this site/boards, and the way they are handled, some have decided to leave. Trust us, we understand your position and frustration, but from now on NO bashing of other sites/boards will be allowed on 1Emulation forums. We have always known to provide ALL Emulation fans regardless of your character, shipper couple, actor or other preference. The main policy here is to respect others likings and have a peaceful atmosphere in our boards.

 

 

1Emulation prides its self in providing an environment where though it might have been posting on another site, we do not want to see or hear bashing or derogatory remarks (we would love to be able to provide you an example of this sort of posts, but because of the this rule, we must stand by it.) that just feeds into the hatred of the person that initially posted it.

 

That is right from our board rules, were not bashing you. I think we all have a right to just post an opinion on something. We never said Blah itself is a bad site, were just talking about one thing that doesn't seem right to us. If we really wanted to bash you, we'd come on your forum and post that, but that's just wrong and is stupid. We don't love you, we don't hate you, were just posting our 2 cents. So please, stop putting it out of proportion. I like conversations like this, let's not make it bashing.

[Wizard]

H4w. K`dash laid it out pretty well. Emulation should be always kept free and if people want to help the site, they'll donate. Not under pressure by the site's administration, but because they want to.

 

And yes, all this 'bandwidth cost money' has been brought up a million times. It's not like people will forget about it once they have heard it for the first time.

Should be, but unfortunately this is the real world where, like you said, 'bandwidth costs money'. BTW, how much money have you donated? If you're like the statistics, there is a 99% chance you haven't. Why? Because while novel in practice, not enough people donate voluntarily to keep a server running.

 

I used to run a Hotline server for free, with just about as many games as Edge had. What did I get? A pile of leechers that didn't even give me the courtesy of a thanks, but dowloaded as much as they felt like.

I don't get my ISO's from sites. Since I don't warez isos anymore. I would donate, only if I was desperate in finding something that I terribly needed. Chances are I could pick up the title for even less then the one-time fee.

 

Well hey, too bad. But what ever you do to keep it running isn't up to me. THIS IS THE REAL WORLD. People will donate if needed. Not pressured.

 

Edit again: Were discussing on the one time fee thing. If we truely wanted to bash you. It would be a big giant attack of The Deep Ones.

Edited May 16, 2004 by K`dash

[TBMonkey]

I never said you all were bashing. I was just joining in the conversation.

 

And that server only costs $500 a MONTH, unlimited bandwith.

 

But how would Paul pay for that without any donations? Banners? Ha, If I could run a $500 a month site on banners alone, I'd be up there with Google. Remember it's either a lot f money or none.

 

@K'dash, you haven't run an emulation site, have you? People are greedy, take what they can get for free and screw you if you ask me to donate.

 

Blah used to rely on clicks before (way before Isos), and they were begging weekly for clicks and donations to keep afloat. Now he has a policy that all new games and Isos are for paying members, and makes good money. Unfortunately that's just good buisness sense.

 

I know you all can get the stuff for free, heck I did, but there are people willing to pay for the convenience of it being all in one spot with good D/L speed.

[Wizard]

Yes, actually I have ran an emulation site before. It failed miseribly because I took down the servers because I didn't feel like running it anymore. I did get screwed over, but I still did it. Without fees and what not. I even ran up a few voting schemes. People found ways to bypass it so I just took it down.

Edited May 16, 2004 by K`dash

[TBMonkey]

Then you can see how hard it is to keep one up?

[Wizard]

I know how hard it is. I know people are greedy. But I still don't know why you couldn't rely on a few banners and a lower donation fee.

[Alpha]

I never said you all were bashing. I was just joining in the conversation.

 

And that server only costs $500 a MONTH, unlimited bandwith.

 

But how would Paul pay for that without any donations? Banners? Ha, If I could run a $500 a month site on banners alone, I'd be up there with Google. Remember it's either a lot f money or none.

 

@K'dash, you haven't run an emulation site, have you? People are greedy, take what they can get for free and screw you if you ask me to donate.

 

Blah used to rely on clicks before (way before Isos), and they were begging weekly for clicks and donations to keep afloat. Now he has a policy that all new games and Isos are for paying members, and makes good money. Unfortunately that's just good buisness sense.

 

I know you all can get the stuff for free, heck I did, but there are people willing to pay for the convenience of it being all in one spot with good D/L speed.

He's had that on ********* since August 10, 2003 which was his last update on that site. So he was surely paying for it before with a ton more servers he has which you can see here (posting this for a 2nd time).. And he already has so many servers, so it's telling me he was already quite rich and he has hosting for other people which they pay him even more, this is all a profit scheme..

 

"Blah has servers across North America, including California, Canada, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and Washington, D.C. We aim to meet your personal or business needs, and range from small scale web-hosting to full dedicated multiserver platforms." - *********

 

If you have that on any site, that tell the people who are looking at it that they are quite rich.

 

Wasn't he also the one who owned *****? I can't remember too well and I can be wrong, but this guy own's a lot of sites and I am pretty sure he has getting a wealthy amount of money from other hostees as well.

[TBMonkey]

I'll suggest something to Paul, though I doubt he'd want to make a multiple account style setup (really complex).

 

You probably could try to rely on a few banners and a low donation fee, but the amount of content you could supply would be smaller. I liked Blah because at the time I found them, all the other sites had very few games and a lot of trickery (vote for us, click these three banners, etc...).

 

---edit---

Yeah, Blah has ben around for a while, but not in it's present form. I remember him switching servers around a few times myself in the past couple of years. Considering the caliber of sites other than Blah itself that he hosts, the hosting isn't that powerful (but I haven't asked him). I Do know that he's hesitant to host any other site that hosts Roms as well, you can speculate on whether to keep competition down or because they're not that strong.

Edited June 29, 2007 by Agozer

[miskie]

Hummm. Tricky..

 

So anyway.. here is my perspective as a webhost to several other sites.

 

Getting Donations for 'server cost' is fine, but once it moves from sustaining site-cost to profitability there is a problem.. Thats the part of "Donations" for a cause that everyone forgets. Every red cent needs to be put toward that cost and any excess or unused monies returned. This is the way Donations work... So, to those at Blah, Id strongly suggest making sure you can account for every penny you folks have gotten and can show how it went into server cost as advertised. Else you are in essence profiting from the selling of roms.

 

 

Now Im not here to tell you how to run your site, its not my place, nor even my concern, but those donations can get you in trouble.

 

Maybe you should set a monthly cost-target and the moment its full stop accepting donations till the next month, that would be the right way to do this. and make sure you keep records just in case.

[Wizard]

Since under the DMCA law. Any program (in this case games/roms) that has been discontinued and not being distrubuted by an offical publisher is considered Freeware. When a game enters reproduction under any new media, the program (game/rom/iso) is considered illegal under the D.M.C.A.

 

Technically, MAME roms are legal. And most of the Neo-Geo games (Metal Slug 3/4/5, KOF2k/2k1/2k2/2k3 are illegal because they are in reproduction under new media. This media is the PS2/Xbox DVD/CD systems.) The D.M.C.A. laws are shoddy to hell, but overall saying. If something is old, and not being distrubuted by any publisher/distrubuter onto any new media is consider freeware. Your (offically supported) Mame sets just got street legal. Even if their old games with new features. It is still considered the same game under the DMCA (Which is a sh!t law btw).

[TBMonkey]

So, are you trying to say that it is MORE illegal to sell roms for profit rather than give them away at expense price?

 

Remember, having, selling, and distrbuting roms in any was shape or form is illegal.