Dear visitors,

this one is probably going to be a larger post and if you don’t care reading, please leave this page right now. It’s time to take a serious and long break, I am not even sure if this is the end of PDRoms, probably it won’t, as I know myself very well. But one fact is here and is not removeable from my mind, I need a break. poqako and kedo will go on a break too, this means the whole PDRoms staff is (temporary) gone.

The homebrew scene has changed a lot since I started to support it, by founding PDRoms. My page turned from a simple, private hobby page into the thing, you can see right now. Plenty of free roms for various systems. My goal was always to proof that a) emulation is not illegal at all and b) that homebrew devers have a great power and can at least make as great games as professional developers, if they can afford the time for it. There are many uncountable games which proof my words, specially on Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, GP32, GP2x, the Nintendo DS and PSP – not to forget to mention the marvellous Dreamcast.

1) The scene I loved to support so much is just not what it was supposed to be. It hurts me to write this, it really hurts, but it has to be. The first shock I got was around half year ago, when the first”bricker”appeared. It turned out to be a joke and only limited to a tiny circle of people, but somehow it spreaded out fast and made even it’s headline at slashdot. How can someone intend to break somone else’s property? Of course this is discussable. The bricker has been created to fuck off pirates, but still the solution way was pretty wrong, which the coder appologized for. To not squirl the shit I don’t mention any names.

2) The second point: Many other pages get by far more attention and the PDRoms team is working their ass off to bring fresh news, many times (not always) faster than others. This is very discouraging! Please go to all the other pages, having hidden affilation codes in their links, having popups, charging for the use of their webboard to get advertisements removed, etc. I am simply sick of it. Homebrew is not about money, it’s about supporting the work of hobbycoders. Of course everyone has to pay his expenses but from many sources you can easily find out that some webmasters in the scene are justinto it for money. This concept is specialy widly spread in the PSP scene. Making lots of money with homebrew sucks! Don’t get me wrong, there are also respectable websites.

3) I’ve always put money back from the banner income (in form of competitions and donations to devs) and with the desaster of the third PDRoms coding competition, I had to pay 3 high quality prices out of my pocket, as the sponsor did not hold his word. I had a loss of around 1000 Euro, which hurted me a lot – I was earning 430 Euro per month at this time. I can not afford to have such a loss, the server must be paid as well. PDRoms is turning from a hobby into a time consuming and money eating full time job.

4) The time part is another bad thing. PDRoms takes around one hour daily, why this you may ask. Not every developer supports us and tells us where to find news, so we have to find them ourself. Most of the team members are very experienced by now, but it still takes a lot of time to find every single piece of news you can read here. I (Kojote) work seven days a week, kedo is student and needs to take care of his university lessons and poqako is a good friend who temporary took over (and did great work, thanks!).

As you can see everyone has a private life and many responsibilities, it is impossible to invest more time into PDRoms right now. All those things are essential for the decision to let PDRoms rest a while. I don’t know how long it will be, nor if I will continue work on PDRoms anyway.

Just take it as it is! I don’t need any comments, it’s too late!

Regards
Kojote