Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ClanBase is no more – we are sorry

clanbase.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: ClanBase is no more – we are sorry

#41

Post by seanalex »

qrybam wrote: post #38
bdickason wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a few of these organizations (CPL, WSVG) and have always been sad to see what's happened to esports/gaming. As you mentioned, GGL was a particularly sketchy organization. To be honest I'm happy to even see a fellow former Q3 player here :) Most of my gaming buddies and clan mates moved on to other fields. Who did you play for?

I'm sure there are many ex gamers lurking around on HN! I played clan games in the early days for a euro team called GZD. What happened to the CPL was interesting to watch from a distance. Before I became good enough to compete at any level, I remember wanting to compete at CPL events. That, and legendary Doom tournaments, were a driving force for me to practice and get good. What was your experience like working the…

There are definitely plenty of ex-gamers lurking on HN. I played under the nickname Daler in the United States. Mostly played Quake and Doom tournaments, but have competed on a variety of other games.

Unfortunately during the time I competed, there were many companies that would spring up and run tournaments with prizes that they ultimately could not pay out on. Or at best, the money would eventually get paid out months/years later. It was very hard for companies to make return on investment when running these gaming sites and tournaments. Overall, it was the work done by volunteers and "teenagers" that made the best events/sites/tournaments...

I always found it very unfortunate that the gaming scene was full of exploitation for these companies. What happened to the GGL (similarly the CPL), comes at no surprise.

Re: ClanBase is no more – we are sorry

#42

Post by seanalex »

qrybam wrote: post #9

Sad state of affairs in gaming. My memories of a number of high profile "pro-gaming" organisations is almost entirely tainted by broken promises of paying out prize money to the winners of their competitions (delays, partial payouts, not paying out at all). With the GGL buying ClanBase in 2004 it was - unfortunately - only a matter of time before something like this happened. I've often wondered why so many big name…

It's a tough business. I'm sure things might be different today, but 10 years back it was very hard for companies and sponsors to run a sustainable (and growable) business in professional gaming. People like Angel Munoz and Ted Owen tried to make it more mainstream, and they had some great ideas on how to accomplish it... but ultimately badly timed and wrongly executed on the whole thing.

Fond memories of Clanbase though and sad it worked out like this.

Re: ClanBase is no more – we are sorry

#43

Post by jrochkind1 »

lazyjones wrote: post #40
Stealth- wrote: post #21

Unfortunately, this is what happens to online communities. Particularly those run by teenagers. I've been a member of a number of communities that have suffered deaths in very similar ways -- choked by the people who own the rights at the expense of the volunteers and the community. It's unfortunate, because I find that often volunteer teenagers are the ones that truly have a passion for doing what they are doing, bu…

> * have a passion for doing what they are doing, but they get held up by corporations or by people who want to monetize. * Could those "passionate teenagers" have kept it running instead of selling the site in 2004 (why didn't they?), or would it have died much earlier if some "greedy" corporation hadn't picked it up and paid the bills all these years? It's great to have the passion to build something cool, but it's…

I don't know the history of this site, but it seems unlikely that most of the 'passionate teenagers' volunteers of the site throughout it's history didn't see any of the money that exchanged hands in 2004. It's usually got nothing to do with whether it was sustainable without a sale or not, it's just minority that owns 'the rights' deciding they can cash in, right?

Re: ClanBase is no more – we are sorry

#44

Post by sejje »

Saus wrote: post #30

Anyone wants to guess when the first spam runs start on the e-mail addresses from users? Don't know if the current owner is shady enough for it. But money is tight and the data is the only valuable thing they got out of it plus there are still debts to be paid.

I get the impression the debts will remain unpaid.

Re: ClanBase is no more – we are sorry

#45

Post by hisyn »

Wow, what a thing to wake up and see on HN. I never thought I would see something from my past on this site.

I officially worked for the GGL from '04 to '09 as one of their initial developers, then as pretty much their only guy to take care of their web infrastructure (Architecture to Ops and everything in between) and I gotta say I'm not surprised this happened this way. So, I can probably add and address a few things here...

@Stealth- & lazyjones: The server setup that ClanBase was residing on was well past its prime and was pretty much overwhelmed every day between 2pm and 7pm ET. I can't really speak for the CB founders (Tal, Wob, and Godsmurf), but I'm pretty sure their was that the site would be well taken care for and pushed into better success by the GGL (we had the money after all). At the time the GGL bought CB, the GGL were seen as a rising star organization in the gaming communities and there were no black spots on their name at that time (and no belief their would be as a lot of big names were associated with it)

Re: "ClanBase Crew": The ClanBase crew were/are tops in my mind. I've been a gamer for a longtime now and have run or have helped run some highly visible tournaments and the CB Crew were the most organized group I ever saw. I'm still in awe with how they ran it. They had a full system from bringing in new people, training and growing them and ensuring they retain only the best talent. It was quite impressive and I still consider some of them as good friends. I hated resigning as I feared this could happen to their community. So to see a message from their side saying they are done is completely understandable and possibly overdue.

The GGL also had a few other "business incidents" (as I liked to call them) that occurred before RackSpace that I really didn't like seeing, as it affected good, gaming friendly companies and people (namely Speakeasy and Game-Hosting). From my point of view, the issues they had can all be traced back to their exec level and their lack of focus and understanding of what they were doing (especially with the competitive gaming community). This ultimately led to them giving themselves black eyes over and over and burning through VC money like crazy. (ie> GGL China and the olympics... did we really need to expand to China? ie2> Massive server infrastructure in US, but very little in Europe, really???)

I gained two big things from my experience at the GGL: 1. Understanding of how _not_ to run a Gaming Startup or possibly any startup (so if I do it, I know how I will do it... and it will look nothing like this disorganized mess) 2. A lot of great friends from the GGL employees, ClanBase crew, Speakeasy and Game-Hosting.

I can say the GGL was at least not like the CyberXGames was, but ultimately, I think the way the GGL went was just disappointing to everyone involved. So much potential just wasted. And worse, all that gaming history lost. (Although I do have most of the Quake related history archived away!)

-Joe aka Syn (from Darkside)

Re: ClanBase is no more – we are sorry

#46

Post by hisyn »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #43
lazyjones wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * have a passion for doing what they are doing, but they get held up by corporations or by people who want to monetize. * Could those "passionate teenagers" have kept it running instead of selling the site in 2004 (why didn't they?), or would it have died much earlier if some "greedy" corporation hadn't picked it up and paid the bills all these years? It's great to have the passion to build something cool, but it's…

I don't know the history of this site, but it seems unlikely that most of the 'passionate teenagers' volunteers of the site throughout it's history didn't see any of the money that exchanged hands in 2004. It's usually got nothing to do with whether it was sustainable without a sale or not, it's just minority that owns 'the rights' deciding they can cash in, right?

Incorrect - the 3 founders that received money actually did spread the money around a bit to those who were working on the site for a while and/or had contributed in some major way. They had a lot of volunteers, so the percentage that got money I heard was small but it was that small group that did the large percentage of contributions.

Re: ClanBase is no more – we are sorry

#47

Post by histortion »

epaladin wrote: post #39
tfb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UT99 is still alive and well! Check out www.globalunreal.com!

It's kind of amazing that game still runs without any issues on new OSes/with new drivers/new hardware. Except now at a gajillion frames per second.

This is mostly thanks to volunteers creating mods/renderers/etc, which in turn is only possible thanks to Epic's focus on user-generated content through the Unreal editor. 15 years later, and people are still adding to the game[1][2].

[1] http://www.globalunreal.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1511 [2] http://www.ut99.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5347&p=58359#p58359

Re: ClanBase is no more – we are sorry

#48

Post by dirkk0 »

richforrester wrote: post #20
jsmeaton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but the specific language used could have been better. "Essentially holding the site hostage" implies that the ex-employee had a responsibility to do some work, which he did not.

Oh, I guess we disagree on that part then. To me it's pretty clear that they mean there's no way for their beloved baby (the site) to be returned because the person holding the power to return it is unwilling to do so. A bit like a school with kids locked inside and the janitor won't open the doors because the school didn't pay him. Hah. Analogies. (Yeah, I stretched it there.)

Now even I understood it.

Re: ClanBase is no more – we are sorry

#49

Post by yoran »

BadassFractal wrote: post #8
yoran wrote: post #2

The end of an era, sad. I remember playing ClanBase tournaments back in my Counter-Strike days.

Same here! ClanBase was one of the first systems out there to be matched compete against other big clans. We used it for a while in the EU CS scene, still remember how much we got our ass kicked one day by the 4kings clan on de_nuke.

OMG de_nuke... Those maps (de_nuke, de_dust2, de_aztec, de_inferno, etc...) sometimes appear in my dreams. I feel like I know them better than my own house!
Post reply on HN