Another Disturbing Trend re: IG

[ow_tiobe_sb]

Some have noticed this issue in the recent past, but I thought I would bring it to others' attention given that the problem has now become a trend.  Freedomfans.com appears to be periodically inaccessible due to exceeded bandwidth.  From month to month, the site seems to exceed its allotted bandwidth and stay down until virtually (if not actually) the following month.

Has anyone received word, or, at the very least, rumour regarding this problem?  Would we have reason to suspect a rogue party (perhaps the same rogue party responsible for attacks on FR and other FF-related sites) has launched a repeated DoS attack on Freedomfans.com?  Or can one simply attribute lack of responsiveness to this problem to IG's lack of concern for two virtually abandoned games?

*leaves floor open to fellow conspiracy theorists*

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat

[ubergreendragon]

gremlins

[Panther_Gunn]

skrulls

[ow_tiobe_sb]

gremlins

skrulls

But enough about your relatives...:P

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat

[GogglesPizanno]

Locusts!!

In all seriousness, I would guess its just an issue of them only paying for a certain amount of bandwidth per month given the age and interest in the game. The error pops up when they hit that ceiling and stays there until the start of the next billing month.

This is why it would be a good idea for anyone who doesn't have the mod tools or other downloads to get them and archive them, cause i can only assume that at some point in the future that site will disappear completely.

[Outcast]

That is sad news. How can they tell there is a lack of interest in it? By the number of hits it gets per day? They don't even bother to update it anymore. I don't know, i think IG is the one that is losing its interest for FF. :(  Guess its now up to the FF fans/community to make those downloads available in their own websites. :mellow:

[stumpy]

My first instinct is to agree with GogglesPizanno on this. But, while no conspiracy theorist am I, I am not really satisfied with the idea that IG/T2 made some business decision to downgrade the bandwidth they were willing to pay for on that site to something that low. Only because a reasonable amount of bandwidth really just doesn't cost that much, even assuming they are paying some third party host for it and it's not part of T2's own system (which may be the case, since I have no idea if they ever switched the ffans stuff over). In the scale of business expenses, it's just hard to imagine someone even bothering to cut monthly downloads to what must be about a GB per month without just taking down the site altogether.

And even that is fishy. My host doesn't even offer hosting with less than 2 GB of monthly bandwidth. That's about 100 FFvT3R mod tool downloads a month. Are more than 100 people trying to download the tools or demo games or whatever in the first fw days of every month? And that's really a total bare minimum. If T2 were only willing to spend $100 a year to keep ffans up (and this is shared hosting, which easily is all that is needed with no changes to the site and no interactive features, like the boards, to maintain) they would get around 100 GB/month, putting us in the neighborhood of 1000-5000 downloads. $100 is absolutely nothing in a company budget.

That's why I doubt that T2 just downgraded the hosting package to something so low it's hitting its bandwidth cutoff each month. No one in a business is going to decide that they won't spend $100 a year who wouldn't instead just decide to shut it down entirely. In other words, I can't see where anyone is going to be thinking, "It costs us about $500 a year to keep ffans online (assuming some random IT expenses), so I think it's worth saving $60 of that by switching from the $100 hosting package to the $40 one." Anyone doing that kind of penny pinching is going to think, "It costs us about $500 a year to keep ffans online, let's shut it down and save $500."

BTW, whatever is going on behind the veil at T2, if this really is a legitimate bandwidth cutoff problem, at least that means a fair number of people are still downloading the demos and tools every month (or trying to)...

[HumanTon]

To be honest, I'm pleasantly surprised the site is still up at all. After all, it's supporting what is, from Take 2's point of view, some ancient product they weren't involved with.