After nearly two decades in the biz, romhacking community lynchpin Romhacking.net is switching out the lights, putting up the chairs, and shutting itself off from new submissions. Why? Because, says the site founder known as Nightcrawler, it's "achieved almost everything it set out to do, and far exceeded it." But according to other figures attached to the site, it might be a bit more complicated.
Let's start at the start. Romhacking, if you're not familiar, is the process of taking a scalpel to the inner workings of videogame roms—basically digital copies of videogame cartridges—to change the game in some way. It's basically a kind of modding, but done on console roms people are plugging into emulators with tools that are generally a tad less official than the modding toolkits you'll get from the likes of Bethesda for PC games.
Creators make them to achieve all sorts of stuff, from fan translations of things that never made it out of Japan to full-on new games. For nearly 20 years, Romhacking.net has been a kind of Nexus Mods-esque host for them, assembling "the largest force of ROM hackers on the planet," per Nightcrawler.
But nothing gold can stay, and Romhacking.net is now retiring, accepting no new hacks or updates to existing ones. In other words, it's shifting to read-only mode rather than going away entirely, at least for now. You'll be able to grab what's already on there "as long as DarkSol, FCAndChill Calico allow," says Nightcrawler, the names referring to prominent users, and the site's archive has been uploaded to the Internet Archive for the day when it truly goes dark. "It may be a good time to start an open source initiative for a new site," Nightcrawler recommends.
It all sounds like a site admin who has grown weary of shouldering a heavy burden, but elsewhere in the post Nightcrawler describes a situation that sounds far more sinister. "I was finally looking to wind things down at the end of last year," says the admin, at which point "an internal group" of users stepped forward to offer to take Romhacking.net off their hands.
After a "rocky" process getting the site's downloads into the new group's hands, Nightcrawler says they "discovered a most dishonest and hate filled group. I learned that I had been dehumanized for a very long time. My personal details had been given out. Secret deceitful plots had been made to cut me out, and drop a bomb like I am a target to destroy."
And that was that. "My family has seen this and after discussion, we are immediately ceasing all related site operations. We are cutting ties to Discord and Twitter social media outlets, and will have no further contact with these individuals. Lines were crossed."
The post attracted sympathy. "This is even worse than the Xbox 360 store shutting down," wrote CRPG book author Felipe Pepe on Twitter, "And this time is not because of greedy CEOs, it's because of entitled freaks harassing pillars of the community." One of the first responses the news attracted on ResetEra was from user BaconHat, who wrote that the closure "truly sucks, but it's definitively better if the alternative was the owner, who did incredible work over the years, was being harassed in a stupid plot against him for no sane reasons."
But other parts of the romhacking community take issue with Nightcrawler's framing. In a Twitter thread, prolific romhacker Gideon Zhi expressed sympathy with Nightcrawler's burnout, but wrote that they had "exerted iron-fisted control over community-created content, and categorically refused basically all offers of help over the last decade.
"In Dec '23, [Nightcrawler] posted about an imminent shutdown. Staff offered to help. It was initially refused. The site was originally going to just be turned off—no archive, no handoff, nothing. 20 years of community contributions just *gone*." Though Nightcrawler expressed a desire for a successor, Zhi writes that their requirements for a candidate were "unrealistic by any measure," requiring a constellation of ability, participation, and a recent donation to the site that made them "a real unicorn."
In Zhi's telling, attempts to save the site were made harder by admin bullheadedness, and attempts to move its backend over to more cost-effective systems met with active resistance. "Mourn for RHDN," writes Zhi, "But this was not the outcome anyone wanted, and Nightcrawler is *not* the victim here."
Over on the site's Discord—which Nightcrawler has declared no longer official—an admin named Snarf wrote that, "Things have been rocky between site staff and Discord staff for a while, and while Discord staff had been exploring possible ways forward, likely including severing the relationship with the existing site and its ownership, we are deeply confused and disappointed by the accusation of doxxing and the implication that we've been threatening."
Referring to Nightcrawler's complaint that their personal details had been given out, Snarf said "We categorically reject these allegations."
Which leaves us, well, not much clearer on what happened. But one thing is certain, a cornerstone of the Romhacking scene is suddenly gone, and plenty of users aren't sure where to turn.
I've reached out to Nightcrawler about Romhacking.net's closure, and I'll update this piece if I hear back.
