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JK3Files Shuts Down


Circa

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If you have been around the Jedi Knight community for very long, no doubt you have heard of and have visited jk3files.com. It was the center of the JK modding scene. JK3Files.com was a "Network Site" of the FileFront community. They hosted many modding related sites, as well as a central forum. Eventually, they were picked up by Break Media, and FileFront became GameFront. Because of the turnover, the creators of the network sites weren't around to maintain them, and the new staff didn't know how or had time to learn how to maintain and repair the sites. Over time this became more of a burden than it was worth, and this week Break Media and GameFront have terminated the network sites.

What does this mean? JK3Files.com is gone. According to the GameFront staff, the files that were hosted are still intact in their file archive system, but not for long. Those too will be removed soon, and only the most popular ones will remain, most likely.

Bad news for us, because the most popular mods are already hosted here. One of the main missions of JKHub was to create a safe and functional place for those mods to remain, but we could only host them if the creators had given us permission to do so. We are slowly trying again in some cases but many mod authors are nowhere to be found with what little contact info we get in a readme file from 10 years ago.

It's sad to see the network sites like JK3Files go, but at least the Wayback Machine has them preserved for us to return to any time we like. You can access that here.

You can read the official announcement from the GameFront staff below or at this link.

 

Hey all,

While the fact that the Network Sites are now, suddenly, offline may come as a surprise to many, we all knew this day would come.

Of course, the websites were a big part of the history and overall contribution to GameFront for a lengthy period of time. They brought with them a thriving community based around popular titles of the time and files that couldn't be found anywhere else on the internet. (literally) Of course, we had our spats and occasional turbulent times, but in the end we all came together as one big family.

The problem is, the house we lived in wasn't built in a way that could allow those who didn't create it, to fix its issues properly. When you try to fix one thing, several other sections would break down. Of course, when you bring in a team that has never seen the network site code before and ask them to repair the issues, you're going to find that it's as daunting a task as asking a toddler to stop saying "no".

So, because of the difficulty and amount of work it would take to even learn how everything operated before anything could be fixed, it was pushed to the back burner to fix other portions of GameFront.

Now, I would like to say in the defense of our corporate overlords that they did return to the network sites to look into them when they could, but, as I said above about not knowing what made what work, they ended up not doing much of anything to fix the issues. It's not their fault, the way the sites were coded were never really meant to make sense to those who created it as they never expected others to ever look at it.

So here we are, a large portion of GameFront that hasn't been able to be updated in years, mixed with random issues that plague it such as screenshots randomly not loading even when they're physically there or the load balance issue that forced you to refresh the page until you were given a valid link to download a file from. It went from a symbol of gaming quality to a blotch on GameFront that made us look broken.

The sites were taken offline and will not return. Right now, we're working on getting the domains to redirect to their respective GameFront counterparts. But, the network sites as you knew them are gone.

I apologize to those who still used them and throughout the years of their use, I thank the volunteers that participated in making them work. Without your support, they wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as they have.

Thanks,
Jeff Mills
GameFront Site/Community/All-of-the-above Manager


mrwonko has kindly supplied a really nice mirror website for the files from jk3files. Take a look at this link: http://mrwonko.de/jk3files/

Click here to view the article
Cerez likes this
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This is very sad, but we all knew it was only a matter of time. I have fond memories from that site :(. I wish we could have somehow preserved the whole site (not just the files, but the text, the comments, all that is gone now).

 

RIP jk3files.

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Yeah, the website has been having issues for years. This isn't just JK3files, but places like Kotorfiles and HL2files also. It would sometimes take me a dozen refreshes just to get a download page to work properly there. The polls they had there were the funniest because of the site's problems. When I would answer a poll from 2013, I wouldn't see the poll results, but get an option to vote on an older poll. After answering that, the results would have the title of the first poll but the answer and their percent votes from the 2nd poll. I remember one poll went something like this:

Do you celebrate holidays?

Top answer: What's an Oculus rift?

 

There was also a map that had file of the week on there that was a Korriban tomb based map and had 1000+ downloads. I tried it out myself, and no offense to the map maker, but it's just a mediocre map with nothing special about it. Half the time, the website would show that as the file of the week, but a few refreshes later and you'd see the more updated site with a new file in it's place. I'm pretty sure the only reason it had so many downloads was because of how many people would notice it as the first thing they saw on JK3files.

 

I hope some of the hidden gems on there are still in some peoples hands and can be re uploaded somewhere. I remember years ago when I would download tons of mods there. Damn.

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It's had a great long run. JK3Files will remain in my memory forever. I think we should be thankful for the service and resource they've provided over so many years.

 

We are indeed lucky for the hard work accomplished here on JKHub to preserve the best of the JK modding community content.

 

Rest in peace, JK3Files. You've lived a long and meaningful life, worthy of your cause.

Circa and Merek like this
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Ahh... this is sad indeed.  I do have Keshire's files as well as the most critical Raven files (dotXSI animations, etc.) archived on my hard drives.  What's the chance of JKHub getting DVD copies of the JK3Files JK2/JKA assets?

What do you mean DVD copies?

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Ugh... When Breakmedia acquired Filefront I downloaded about 75-80% of the JK3 files, but I neglected to be as diligent with "Empire at War" or "Kotor" or "Elite Force" or any of the other dozen games I play.

While I'm pretty sure I already know the ethical answer to this question, what is the possibility of an 'orphaned works' section on JKhub, with the posting of files with as much credit and knowledge we have after attempts were made to contact them, and the stated notice that any file will be removed at the original author's request?

I guess it's still unlikely, but it seems sad to think that all these files are going to disappear into the deep dark.

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Well that's kinda the approach we have now. Most authors didn't reply because they simply have left the community or don't use their old emails. Only a couple of people have actually denied our request to host.

 

I think now that JKHub is well established and the last place to host JK mods, those people that denied might be a little more willing to host their stuff here.

 

But it will always be a sketchy topic. We make it easy for people to request that a file is taken down, right on the file page. You don't even need an account to request that, just an email.

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It was just a matter of time, i suppose... JK3 Files is no more! All my mods i have it on 3 HDD's Duplicates Backups ! Even JKhub is shuting down in the near future.. still have some good mods.. but i don't have it all. If JKhub policy it was a little free i will post them all... :D This is the secret of JKA game... modding !! Too bad TFU game is not the same.

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It was just a matter of time, i suppose... JK3 Files is no more! All my mods i have it on 3 HDD's Duplicates Backups ! Even JKhub is shuting down in the near future.. still have some good mods.. but i don't have it all. If JKhub policy it was a little free i will post them all... :D This is the secret of JKA game... modding !! Too bad TFU game is not the same.

JKH isn't going away anytime soon.

And anyway, as stated above, there are ethical issues regarding rehosting other people's content.

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