Independant Homebrew Sites a Dying Breed ?

Over the years we have seen many homebrew sites come and go, but worryingly over the last few years homebrew and hacking sites have been brought by Millionaire owners as a way of getting major sites under their belts and often without the user even knowing.

If you look around all the Hacker and Homebrew sites now youll see that a heck of a lot of them are owned by Mega rich outside owners with funds way above most of our dreams.

Id like to know what people think about this, is it a good thing ?, with the recent hackings here at DCEmu and the struggle to bring back all the old site content i wish i had a lot of cash to buy the best. But is the taking over of hacking and Homebrew sites the start of sites losing their ability to say what they like and post what they like.

Today i read on a site that was started by a webmaster who said he would never sell out that they indeed sold out, im not mentioning any names but it stunned me, has the homebrew scene changed so much ?

What is there to gain? Can there be more profit from these sites? Is more money all it takes to make more money? Are they changing the format into a more IGN or GameFaqs style site? If I am used to a certain amount of candid speech from a site, I would surely find another one if I always had to doubt the change in bias. I rely on multiple sites for their individual bias. I know for certain types of news I need to go to certain sites. If I ever had to doubt that one of those sites was not living up to the expectations the same site had set for itself, then there would be a large void in my knowledge base. (diction note: quite a run-on and extremely explicitly reflexive). But that void would be probably quickly filled by another outfit. If a web site wanted venture capital to expand and had a vision as well as documented risk/revenue AND an investor who be "hands off"(which won't happen (and therein lays the rub)) then by all means go ahead. But with failure of dcemulation.com's ambition of one guy's short term revenue expectations I seriously doubt there is anything money can do that a couple of smart guys couldn't figure out. It might take longer without the capital but it could be done. Hardware Tech is getting cheaper by the day. But if someone was willing to write a check to me for a site of mine I would really have to think about it. The worst part is I couldn't tell anyone about even the possibility because of the backlash from my patrons and the investor. Quite a conundrum. Made worse by a non-competition clause in the sale. I couldn't just start over again with a new domain name. Or even contribute on a friends website that had similar content. But I would have cash equity to do something, but what? I have to give back to the people? Can't squander all of it on holiday. That would be irresponsible. You probably could've stopped reading this after the first line.

Where the heck are the line breaks???
That's freakin' terrible.

You're the one who wrote it, you should know where the line breaks are. ;)

More on topic, where are all these millionaires, and how can I sell out to them?!? :D

I've been a member here for more than 4 years now, and been a member on Gp32x for almost 9. I love being here/there and I understand that although this is just a hobby for me but it takes a lot of time/money from admins and site maintainers. I don't know how would I feel if the site was sold to a company, but for sure I know it would make a difference because they wont throw money unless they expected some kind of return.

Wraggster are you using any of the site returns for living expenses? I see a lot of work done on affiliate stuff and I hope there's something extra from time to time for you to at least pay the bills.

Since lik sang died and they were a great site for affiliates, revenue has died majorly, i used to get the odd console but now its all for the love of it, the recent hacking really dented my spirit, to the point i was close to giving up but now i feel refreshed and whats good is that im working on bringing all the old sites back and the content on them which is so important to the history of dcemu, tonight ive had a major breakthrough on VB4 and getting our old scripts and hacks working through it needless to say, im well pleased, just need a bit more luck to get the rest working.

damn better start newsposting :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by guymelef

What is there to gain? Can there be more profit from these sites? Is more money all it takes to make more money? Are they changing the format into a more IGN or GameFaqs style site? If I am used to a certain amount of candid speech from a site, I would surely find another one if I always had to doubt the change in bias. I rely on multiple sites for their individual bias. I know for certain types of news I need to go to certain sites. If I ever had to doubt that one of those sites was not living up to the expectations the same site had set for itself, then there would be a large void in my knowledge base. (diction note: quite a run-on and extremely explicitly reflexive). But that void would be probably quickly filled by another outfit. If a web site wanted venture capital to expand and had a vision as well as documented risk/revenue AND an investor who be "hands off"(which won't happen (and therein lays the rub)) then by all means go ahead. But with failure of dcemulation.com's ambition of one guy's short term revenue expectations I seriously doubt there is anything money can do that a couple of smart guys couldn't figure out. It might take longer without the capital but it could be done. Hardware Tech is getting cheaper by the day. But if someone was willing to write a check to me for a site of mine I would really have to think about it. The worst part is I couldn't tell anyone about even the possibility because of the backlash from my patrons and the investor. Quite a conundrum. Made worse by a non-competition clause in the sale. I couldn't just start over again with a new domain name. Or even contribute on a friends website that had similar content. But I would have cash equity to do something, but what? I have to give back to the people? Can't squander all of it on holiday. That would be irresponsible. You probably could've stopped reading this after the first line.

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Im still kicking :]

@wraggster keep up the great work man; hope other affiliate programs become more profitable (could it be that these hackers are trying to steal your referrals for their own affiliate programs and that's why they are attacking dcemu servers?)