record amiga games n'est plus !

[xcomcmdr]

xcomcmdr

#192276

En cherchant un longplay de Voyager je suis tombé sur ce message dans un lien de cette vidéo :

Before you continue reading. Click HERE to start some music. Don’t like it? Stop it HERE. Or choose any track you want from the list at the bottom of this page.

A (final) letter from Hipoonios:

Some things have happened in our community making me not want to continue running any of the game related sites that I have created and host on my server anymore. I lost the motivation, here’s why:

It all started a few months ago. When a certain user in our community wanted to make our YouTube channel partnered. With partnered it means you can make money on YouTube by have ads in your videos (also known as monetization). This is nothing I wanted to do. Because I really hate ads and it has never been my intention to make money of my work.

The YouTube account was created by us (me and Ironclaw) in early 2006. It was first a host account for Recorded Amiga Games (“RAG” – a site created by us in 2005). In 2008 another site was born: World of Longplays (WoL), this site was also created by us with the intent to host longplays for other systems. So we used the YouTube account to upload videos from both sites.

Two years later, In 2010 we gave away WoL for FREE. This is because it took too much of our spare time. We thought we gave away the site to the right guy and that it was gonna be in good hands… but nope! It turned out that guy who took over was a retard and knows nothing about web development and that stuff. And he bought personal things with the donation money the site received.

Now, when we gave away WoL we also gave access to the YouTube account so the new owner and his moderators/admins could continue to upload videos from that site.

I have been so stupid! (yes I really have!)

When I heard about monetization I got angry and said something I will regret. I said I will put ads only on my and Ironclaw’s videos. That was stupid of me saying something like that. But bear in mind, I said it for a reason! Ironclaw and I are the founders of everything and we have spent thousands of hours and a lot money on our projects. So if someone deserve anything then it is us. The money we would make on our videos would be used for hosting and other site related things. The WoL guys have not spent a single penny and have not made anything! And all money they are making now will be use for personal stuff. That was nothing we wanted to do. But as I said, I still regret what I said because now people seem to think I said it just to be selfish, which is not true.

Using the same YouTube account for WoL and RAG was another stupid thing to do. But the most stupid thing must be giving away WoL. Oh well, too late to do something about all mistakes now.

Now we are are closed out from the YouTube account (they changed the password). They said we could still have our future videos on the account if we just send them to them, but that’s not an option for us. So some months ago we created new YouTube channels (one for RAG and one for C64) so we could continue to upload our videos – ad free.

Now you might wonder why I don’t just let this go. Sorry but I cannot live with that these people will make money out of this. They are making a lot too! Some of them making enough for a living. If they want to make money then they could upload their videos to their own channels or get a normal job! (some of them are even uploading their videos to their own channel, just to make even more money). And what other communities using a sharing system like this? I don’t know any. Myself are working with an industrial job 8 hours a day and make less than these guys. And Ironclaw is unemployed. We have said that we can continue to work for free. But only if they does that too. But the likelihood of that happening is not high. The admins on WoL and many others want ads.

But what now was the very last straw was that the “leader” of the YouTube account and WoL promised me a BONUS once the first month or two has gone by which is when he would start to divide the revenue (which he did and me and Ironclaw got our share as well of course), but I never got the promised bonus (and a lot of people saw the promise he made). This bonus was to sort of buy my acceptance in all of this, which I would be OK with as I would finally GET something for all my hard work creating these sites etc, BUT… no bonus was given, my very last hope of retribution was shattered, I have been tricked again.

Another thing that I find sad is that some recorders don’t want the money from their movies and rather donate them to the WoL site. Why WoL? It cost like NOTHING to host WoL. About €1-2 a month. RAG cost like €50 a month as I need to pay the people that hosts the mirror accounts + have my own server on 24/7. As RAG doesn’t even get €50 a month, it all comes from my own pockets, whereas whatever costs WoL might have, they just take it from the recorders’ earned revenue. Now you might say that there’s archive.org, but that place sucks as it’s not reliable. So that’s not good enough for RAG. Also, they are gonna spend some of the recoders’ money on upgrading the site, which we would never have done as it means less money to everyone else. We would at least have asked for permission first and have a very good reason to upgrade the site. They don’t seem to have one, they just want to fancy it up and don’t want to use their own money, like the leader and the guy I gave the site to, they just take the donations (at least the guy who got the site from me) and put in their own pockets. But I heard that they will remove the donation thingy from WoL now when they make enough from the monetization.

Here is an example:
At the moment the Admin of WoL want to upgrade his site. But he can’t do it himself so he must hire someone. Now he don’t have pay anything for that himself. But let’s say I need to hire someone, then I must use my own money. I don’t think that is very fair. And I have hired people a lot of times over the past years! And he got the site for free and access to the YouTube account. And now he does this to me!

We will therefore leave the Community. It feels really sad to leave because Amiga and longplays have been a big part of our lives for many years. I hope you have liked what we have accomplished for the longplay/C64/retro/Amiga community over the past eight (8!) years.

We would also like to thank everyone who have contributed and helped us in any way (all game recorders etc..) Without you guys nothing would be possible! We might post a greetings list here someday.

The sites are now backed up and stored in a safe place. Maybe we’ll meet again. Who knows.

RIP. 🙁

A500 (1MB), A600 (HS), A1200 by Hivernaal. 🙂