Hosts of audiogames.net,
We hope this message finds you and your families well during these unprecedented times.
This letter is being written with help from and on behalf of the current audiogames.net administrative staff. Although we have done our best to keep this missive as concise as possible, there is a great deal to cover, and we need your input as soon as possible.
First and foremost, the email notification systems are down, making it impossible for users and administrators to get email alerts.
Second, there has been a considerable uptick in site errors as of late.
For instance, visitors have begun to face issues loading pages:
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3979 … -going-on/
Additionally, the "Latest News" section on the main page has been completely wiped
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3994 … s-section/
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3992 … up-for-me/
Here are examples of more miscellaneous issues, such as 404 and 403 HTTP responses when loading certain topics
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/4002 … te-errors/
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/39921/403-forbidden/
The MySQL max_user_connections error is especially concerning from a few angles. Either connections aren't properly being closed (unlikely), bots have been relentlessly hitting the server (The CDN should be protecting that in theory), or someone has attempted to launch a concerted attack to see how it would respond. Even if the latter doesn't turn out to be the case, we consider it an exploitable attack vector, and would not be surprised if other lurkers have come to the same conclusion, some possibly with nefarious intent.
On a similar note, admins are also entirely unable to access the IP stats interface due to a similar MySQL error, which has been a persistent problem for years. This glitch inhibits our ability to locate users with alternative accounts attempting to skirt their way around bans. Further, we have discovered that banned users can post as guests to the restricted topic, possibly due to the fact that the default user group is the restricted group.
Now, let's move on to a slightly less technical issue.
When users are punished, or when they experience site issues, they are encouraged to reach out to "[email protected]" as per forum software. However, no active staff member has access to this address. We must instead resort to reports, PMs and personal handles in order to establish contact, It is impossible to guess just how many messages from the last couple of years have disappeared down this proverbial black hole.
At various points over the last while, many of us - staff and users alike - have commented that this place is falling apart. There have been stretches of downtime where we couldn't help but step back and wonder just what would happen if the site never came back.
Judging by topics echoing these sentiments, this was not a unique perspective.
As a result, one of the team members ended up rolling their own offsite backup solution, crawling every page and topic and outputting to HTML as well as an SQL database. Funnily enough, another poster had the same idea:
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3970 … the-forum/
As a team, however, we soon realized that this attempted solution would not suffice. Amidst a mounting number of errors and concerns, a team member turned to the game database and wrote a downloader for that as well:
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3992 … ownloader/
This is about as inefficient as it gets. The backup frequency has been spaced out, but each of these still ends up counterproductively hitting the server for hours, potentially leading to the MySQL connection limit error and further complicating the process for everyone.
Apart from the technical issues, however, is a legal one. Put simply, this community has been openly inconsistent with regard to copyrighted assets. It has historically been okay to promote fine titles that use and/or reference copyrighted assets without clear intentions of harm (take Jim Kitchen's games, for instance) yet stealing sounds from an indie developer is very much considered heinous and wrong. In an effort to deal with this problem, we set about clarifying the rules and trying to put in place a copyright policy that was more in keeping with standards upheld elsewhere on the internet. Our wish here is to maintain standards which make sense and which do not unduly punish community members, however as our footprint grows, we must be aware, now as never before, that our actions are more apt to be noticed and thus more apt to elicit negative consequences. Therefore, we are asking for your help in establishing and deciding upon a protocol which is legally stable and which represents your intended vision for the community.
In essence, a lot of us are deeply concerned about the longevity of this wonderful community, and are intent on preserving it for as long as possible.
With all due respect for you and your work in establishing this website and its attendant community, however, the current administration is in agreement that we have no interest in remaining passive while problems persist. It is unrealistic to expect us to maintain this community, given the various problems that we are powerless to correct. In a topic from 2019, Sander had expressed a willingness to consider letting others help work on the site. As such, we would like to revisit this topic, as there are three (3) members of the current staff team with the requisite experience to maintain the community if given the access to do so. Carter, for instance, is primarily a software developer, but has done backend development and can write PHP at scale. He has also contributed code to a number of games and open-source projects. Jack actively maintains the audiogames archive, found here:
https://www.agarchive.net
We are more than willing to discuss our qualifications in more detail, with links, code, and whatever else might prove necessary.
While we recognize that you have busy lives and little time - per your own admission - to maintain the website, we are united in our stance on these matters. As a team, there is only so much that we can expect to do without the proper authorization, and we have been diligently doing the best job we can under the circumstances. We are asking you to respond to us at your earliest convenience. In the interest of transparency, we wish to inform you that a copy of this letter will be posted in a thread to the audiogames.net forum, so that the user base knows we are continuing to strive toward better maintenance and clearer standards. In addition, while it is not our intention to badger you or to display excessive force, it is important that you realize that we will not wait forever for a response. Should you choose not to respond to our request within a reasonable time, we are prepared to abandon our positions on the staff team, and to cease maintenance of the forum and site entirely. It is our sincere hope that such an event does not come to pass, but we are unanimous in our resolve to take this step should all other options prove fruitless. We would truly appreciate a chance to work with you to ensure that this community continues to thrive, as it has become a strong and ever-growing collection of individuals from across the globe who are all interested in the pastime of audiogames. We have great respect for the work you have done, and it is this respect which motivated us to reach out to you, to see if we could alleviate the pressure this website may be placing upon you. I believe that all of us have the same ultimate goal in mind, and we fervently hope to realize that goal by working cooperatively to solve the list of problems cited above. We thank you for your time and attention.
The audiogames.net administrative team