IGN killing Planet and other freely hosted sites on Aug 31?

[Jetsetlemming]

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... _shutting/

-> The Hosting Services will end on 11.59 PM, August 31st, 2009.

-> No backups or snapshots will be maintained after that date (download everything you wish to keep). You will no longer have access to your site or any aspects of it (content, assets, files etc.) after that date and we will remove/delete all such files from our servers.

I can't find any other reference to this online, but if it's true (and it wouldn't surprise me in the least, IGN's basically the most money grubbing network on the entire internet and killing off freely hosted content seems like a popular thing for them especially), a lot of internet gaming history could suddenly be lost. In particular, I'm thinking of PlanetDeusEx, which hosts like 90% of everything regarding DX, it's old community, it's production, and modding tutorials on the internet, particularly the Universal Constructor, and Witchboy's Cauldron, written by Harvey Smith himself.

[Minos]

PlanetHalfLife included? fuck

[Izuno]

Wow I had no idea. Thanks for posting. I downloaded my hosted site which has been dormant on PHL for years now. Brought back fond memories of my DoD mapping days.

[Hourences]

It is true, site owners have been notified 3 weeks ago.

PlanetUnreal has like 200 sites hosted. There goes history...

I am suprised it survived this long actually.

[Thrik]

That's pretty sad. I hope someone is using a web archiver to grab copies of these sites, and maybe even host them somewhere. Lots of nostalgic, cool stuff on there.

Sadly my own PlanetBlackAndWhite site got baleeted ages ago. Got no copy of it I don't think.

[tofu]

It's a shame to hear, but are they really that popular anymore? I haven't even noticed links coming from other sites that point there.

The only thing I really miss is Radium's website when he used to review HL: DM levels, sad they didn't archive that one at all.

[Jetsetlemming]

It's not about being currently popular, but rather being a collection of gamer community history.

I still to this day use the tutorials on PlanetDeusEx though.

[AlexM]

so is this the hosted sites or the entire planet sites themselves?