JK3Files Shuts Down
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
By Circa, in Community News,
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now