Another one bites the dust.
In the wake of Nintendo’s legal action against ROM sites, another site is rolling up the carpet and packing it in. EmuParadise, a nearly 20-year-old site and one of the largest ROM sites on the internet, is calling it quits. At least, as far as ROMs go.
As it stands, the site no longer offers downloads for ROMs. And, chances are, they never will again. Site founder MasJ wrote a news post concerning the change; an excerpt:
Many of you are aware that the situation with regards to emulation sites has been changing recently. What you probably don’t know is that we at EmuParadise have been dealing with similar issues for all 18 years of our existence.
From receiving threatening letters in the early days to our hosts suddenly shutting down our servers due to complaints, we’ve seen it all. We’ve always complied with takedown requests but as you can see, that is no guarantee of anything.
I started EmuParadise 18 years ago because I never got to play many of these amazing retro games while growing up in India and I wanted other people to be able to experience them. Over the years, many folks have joined in and contributed to this vision and I think I can say that we’ve been successful in spreading our passion for retro games far and wide.
[…]It’s been a long and beautiful journey with many ups and downs. When I started EmuParadise things could have gone either way. But right now the direction they are going in could not be more than clear.
So where does that leave us?
It’s not worth it for us to risk potentially disastrous consequences. I cannot in good conscience risk the futures of our team members who have contributed to the site through the years. We run EmuParadise for the love of retro games and for you to be able to revisit those good times. Unfortunately, it’s not possible right now to do so in a way that makes everyone happy and keeps us out of trouble.
This is an extremely emotional decision for me after running this site for so many years. But I believe it is the right thing for us at this point of time.
Thus, we have decided to make a new start. We will continue to be passionate retro gamers and will keep doing cool stuff around retro games. But you won’t be able to get your games from here for now. Where we go with this is up to us and up to you.
Essentially, the site is no longer a ROM site. They still have the emulator database, which is legal to host; and the community, which may as well be your average gaming forum. But other than that, the core of that site is now gone.
As to what the future holds, though, is anyone’s guess.
Source: PC Gamer
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