Well… It’s April 1st… April Fool’s Day.
EVENING UPDATE:
Okay, I’ll admit… when I said I don’t care… I lied. I do care. Not because I care what happens to the site or plan to somehow redeem the old BWL, but I care out of shear morbid curiosity.
When I posted this morning, I was a tired and a little irritated. And I made a number of typos.
Anyway, I feel like editing the post with a little more effort.
So…
As of this moment, FileFront is still on-line. In fact, the forums are back up and running. Many comments on the countless news posts about the FileFront closing are calling shenanigans. Even on their own forums, there are several new topics asking if the “joke” was funny or if it was all a joke.
As I said a few days ago when we first started worrying about this, a bad April Fool’s joke was a possibility. But I still don’t believe this to be the case. I have a hard time believing that FileFront would allow a hoax to go this far. I mean seriously, there are news articles on actual gaming magazine websites about this.
A joke is a joke. On April Fool’s Day, everyone expects some form of cheap gag. For Battlefiled Hero’s, the site became Battlefield Dork. For Freeman’s Mind, it was the death of Freeman. On thatguywiththeglasses.com “That Guy” swapped all of his characters for his movie reviews and such. These jokes are meant to be amusing.
What happened on FileFront is hardly a joke. If it were an ill-advised April Fool’s Prank, then it would qualify more as a hoax. The problem with hoaxes would be that they may not be funny and often are hurtful.
I just can’t see FileFront affecting all of its hosted sites, all of it’s sub-sites, all of it’s sub-site’s hosted sites, and the forums and files. That would be reckless and detrimental. Not helpful.
Moreover, they HAVE been offering free hosting, free file hosting, etc. They make any money off advertising. Shutting down would be more then possible due to cost issues alone… which IS their explanation after all.
Still… it could be an out of control prank. And at this point, I don’t care. If it was a hoax, I won’t be going back. I’ve spent money on our new website. As have a number of other folks.
According to the forum announcement thread…
I assure you all that the forums being online at this time is not a joke or something that is temporary. What information I have is that there will be more information to be expected sometime tomorrow. I myself am not entirely sure what is going on and why the forums are back online. I’ll know when you know really. I was just instructed to let you know that this is for real and not a joke by any stretch of the imagination. I know many will not believe me because of the terrible timing, but the persons that I had talked to about this would never joke with me about this sort of thing.
More to come as I find it out.
Jeff
There is another possibility. Someone could have bought FileFront. There had been some rumors that UGO might be interested… given that they bought the rest of 1up last year.
Or the parent company, Ziff Davis, might have decided to leave the servers on-line for a month or so to allow its hosted sites to move… as opposed to the week they gave us last week.
In the end, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the news is later. But then again, that is the real problem. Zero communication.
No one has given us any real information. They haven’t explained why the site is still on-line. They haven’t said April Fool’s. No other company has announced that they have bought the site. Nothing.
So… I’m curious. What is happening?
What do you think? Was it an elaborate and poorly considered April fool’s day hoax that they are now affraid to end for fear of riot? Has someone rescued filefront from the brink of oblivion? Did it receive a last minute reprieve from the upper management types? A stay of execution? Did Barak Obama personally fly to California to rescue the company with a federal bailout? Do you even care?
Should any of us?
