While I know it wouldn't take a ton of work, and is a huge archive which would be bad to disappear, it seems like he is really sick of it, and doesn't want to worry about dealing with it at all, like getting the payments, then sending out the bills, and upkeep with the server.

What he basically says is that even without updating it, he'll have to spend quite a lot of time administering the servers and taking care of the forum. As for what we said about 'no support', 'no contact' and 'no updates', that's where he simply has another opinion.

Okay nevermind, I misread. If he does use some material he will leave it up.

Does he not say he will leave it up until he uses the material elsewhere?

Well, I'm not too happy to see him gone, especially if he wants to pull everything off-line, but I must admit I haven't visited his site for over two years. For me personally, it wouldn't be a loss, but I do agree that is was one of the largest gateways into abandonware for newcommers.

I can understand very well if he doesn't want to update the site anymore. However, I really see no reason why he should shut it down entirely. As Mr Creosote said; if he pulls his e-mail address, people wouldn't be even able to bug him about problems or requests. Did he give any reason?

Everything got worse since http://www.gangsters.org is gone anyway.

That's actually true. The only sites which are still older (and which I can name from the top of my head) are XTC, Home of the Underdogs, Flashback Abandonware and Zymbo's Homepage (hehe).

Another aspect of closing the site is that there are not many old abandonware sites left...

If you want to see this in a postive way: The Good Old Das and 21st Century Oldies are on their way to become the oldest sites.

Just for clarification: He does run two dedicated servers for the site, and they do cost money, but he says the advertisements pay the bills fully.

I don't understand taking it down either (if he doesn't have to pay for hosting). It could remain online in its current state, being helpful for hundreds of people. Not updating a site doesn't mean that it's useless. It's the complete opposite of the idea of "abandonware" as a way to preserve things, and not thowing them away.

I talked to another webmaster who wanted to shut his site down a few days ago (actually, he has by now, and it went sadly unnoticed), and the reason he gave me for taking the site down was "the games are all available elsewhere and I'm not maintaining it anymore". It was a site with just a list of downloads, sorted by genre, no other information. So he felt the site was obsolete.

Now one of the biggest sites shuts down. Seems like "the games are all available elsewhere" won't be a proper reason for other webmasters in the future anymore, because quite a lot of games will all of sudden become unavailable (or at least harder to find) again.

It's also a hard blow, because CT was the only really big 'download' site which got new people 'into the scene'.

As for my personal feelings on this... call me an asshole, but I simply can't understand the "meh-I-don't-feel-like-running-it-anymore-so-I'm-going-to-delete-it-all" attitude. A huge library like this would be worth preserving even if it stays stagnant! Prerequisites of this would of course be no costs (which according to Tox is the case with CT) and no work (i.e. no contact e-mail which needs to be checked and answered, no need for technical maintainence etc.). That could be possible, because the site has an active forum whose members can more or less take over the daily dealing with the common visitor problems.

So.... it's Tox' decision, he's not obliged to offer anything. I'm sure he has his reasons, and that has to be good enough for us. However, seen from the outside, I can't understand it.

Any reactions, comments, interest?