
ClanBase is no more – we are sorry - JRambo
http://clanbase.org
======
Stealth-
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, but they get held up
by corporations or by people who want to monetize. When that doesn't work, the
people in charge ignore the community until it dies.

It's sad to see it happen to another community.

~~~
lazyjones
> * 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 a little
cooler if it's sustainable.

~~~
jrochkind1
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?

~~~
hisyn
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.

------
Diamons
"Since our sysadmin was not getting paid, he refused to perform this,
essentially holding the site hostage for a while."

You don't pay the man and you expect him to do work for you, and then you
blame him for holding the site hostage?

Sorry, what?

~~~
richforrester
3 parties in that statement.

1) the people writing this, who did all the hard work

2) the system admin, hired by party 3 -

3) the people that should do the paying.

1 Has the right to whine at the expense of 3 not paying 2. To me, in that
statement, that's what they're doing. They aren't saying 2 is the guilty
party, just saying that the method is not one they appreciate, since the
people suffering from party 2's actions are party 1.

~~~
jsmeaton
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.

~~~
richforrester
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.)

~~~
dirkk0
Now even I understood it.

------
qrybam
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 organizers have gone bust - why they
end up with such bad reputations - why it's so hard to build a sustainable
business out it. Of course with so many naive kids participating it must be
very tempting for even remotely crooked people to take the money and run.

Two organisations which have been running for a while and which I still have
respect for are ESWC and WCG. Would be interesting to hear from someone in the
know about the economics about these operations.

So many good memories, gone. RIP CB.

\-- Source: ex Quake3 player

~~~
bdickason
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?

~~~
qrybam
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 there? I can imagine it was awesome
<sarcasm>until the discussion about money came up.</sarcasm>

~~~
seanalex
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.

------
dmnd
I read this a "Coinbase is no more - we are sorry" and panicked for a second.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Just shows how risky putting your money into coinbase is; no safety net if
they decide to pull the plug. Not until bitcoin is considered legal tender and
coinbase gets a bank audit and becomes part of insurance policies to
recompensate people if they did end up going bankrupt.

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

~~~
BadassFractal
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.

~~~
yoran
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!

------
kayoone
Wow, sad. More than a decade ago Clanbase was all the rage. Their Eurocup
tournaments were among the biggest and most prestigious in Quake3 and i loved
to watch the big teams fighting for the crown each time. In 2002 i even went
from Germany to the Quake Pub in Rotterdam to watch the Eurocup 3 Finals live.
A few years later their best times were over though and the gaming community
was different, they have been on a decline ever since.

Good times...sad to see them go :/

------
oelmekki
That's sad indeed.

I'm not blaming staff, but I think there's something they could have done
indeed. Esport[1] is doing quite well nowadays, especially around blizzard
games.

Blizzard has a lot of money to invest in this, seeing a big return value in
turning a game into a sport, but it may not be possible without sponsors. If
you want to organize tournaments with prizes, you have to have sponsors. In
big esl events, those are intel, acer, nvidia, etc. Esport events are
extremely well targeted events for them, the only better option would be to
add ads directly in games.

Crowdfunding prizes is also an option. This week-end, a bitcoin starcraft
challenge[2] was organized, mainly funded (to the words of organizer during
stream) by reddit users giving bitcoins, and a few other sponsor - mainly
bitcoin trading websites. Don't try to hide this into some kind of premium
account. People don't want that, they want to see events.

You can't just rely on a company you seem to have no contact with to just give
away big money (even if they are indeed the ones to blame, if that's article
is true, because they were no right to their word).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_sports](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_sports)

[2]
[http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Bitcoin_StarCraft_Chal...](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Bitcoin_StarCraft_Challenge)

(edited links formatting)

------
kriro
Used to play UT Classic there a ton.

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

~~~
epaladin
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.

~~~
histortion
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](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](http://www.ut99.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5347&p=58359#p58359)

------
kbar13
played a lot of Urban Terror in clanbase, but clanbase was already pretty much
dead as of a year or so ago.

~~~
candl
Me too. I believe somewhere between 2003-2005. I have even browsed the
archived match reports from cups on ClanBase a few months ago to see what I
have been up to in the past :) Good times.

------
dfkf
RIP
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV5OiaPtxTA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV5OiaPtxTA)

~~~
wudf
It was a beautiful time.

------
59nadir
I'm sad to see this. I can't say I've been using it even in the last 5-6
years, but I used to follow the NationsCup tournaments and we used to play on
the ladder a lot back in the day.

It truly is like seeing the pub you and your friends used to go to close up
shop and wondering why you ever stopped going there.

------
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)

------
Saus
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.

~~~
sejje
I get the impression the debts will remain unpaid.

------
alien3d
Seem a few startup here fail because of payment to amazon.It realy worth to
host application on cloud platform or much better host server yourself method.

~~~
EdwardDiego
If you can afford it, AWS is nice, especially with the ability to spin up
capacity only when you need it, which can make the economics work in your
favour. If you're not sure if you can afford it, then stay off it. It's easy,
but that convenience doesn't come cheap.

------
fojji
Tip of my hat to Godsmurf and Tal. Clanbase had a nice run and I had the
privilege to attend several of their LAN events. Thanks for everything.

~~~
Saus
Don't forget Amsterdam Rob (Wob?), he was one of the original founders as well
I believe.

------
Aardwolf
Wow, it is over 12 years ago that I used that website with Unreal Tournament
clans! Seems like it was yesterday! Good times...

------
eagle_eagle
Never say sorry.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
What?

