Michael Beckwith 
Arguably the most well-known romhack website on the internet, Romhacking.net, is winding operations down after 20 years, leaving users and fans alike to wonder what happened.
For anyone who may be unfamiliar with the name, Romhacking.net has been a place for people to share hacks and fan translations of retro video games. As such, it has allowed people to access games that were never released in their home countries, as well as custom mods for older games. Just recently, the site accepted new submissions for mods of Pokemon Emerald and the original Super Mario Bros.
According to the site’s founder, known as Nightcrawler, Romhacking.net will no longer be accepting new submissions. In addition, the site will remain accessible solely in a read-only format. However, the site database and all its files have been released to the Internet Archive for the sake of preservation, and the forums will remain active.
Why is Romhacking.net shutting down?
In a statement posted to the Romhacking.net website, Nightcrawler explained what happened by saying that there were multiple factors that contributed to the decision to end support. For starters, with the site gaining more notoriety as the years went on, it has had to contend with numerous copyright takedown requests and other “legal burdens.” In addition, the site had apparently become inundated with bots and “overzealous people abusing resources,” while other alternatives for community discussions and open source projects have cropped up.
Nightcrawler suggested that they had hoped to find a successor to take over the website’s operation, but that wound up not happening. So they instead chose to start winding the site down towards the end of last year.
Another group had offered to take over Romhacking.net given what happened, aiming to keep things running. But Nightcrawler described said group as “dishonest and hate filled,” alleging it had sent out Nightcrawler’s personal details and plotted to “cut me out, and drop a bomb like I am a target to destroy.” Nightcrawler has since severed ties with this group, as well as with the website’s Twitter and Discord affiliates.
Others dispute what happened to Romhacking.net
Other members of the romhacking community have claimed otherwise, however. One prolific romhacker known as Gideon Zhi shared a lengthy Twitter thread arguing that Nightcrawler “exerted iron-fisted control over community-created content, and categorically refused basically all offers of help over the last decade.” In addition, Gideon Zhi claimed Nightcrawler’s requirements for a successor were unrealistically high, and he has refuted the accusations that members of his group attempted to dox Nightcrawler, saying he was “livid at even the suggestion that we did.”
A Discord statement from Romhacking.net staff, has mirrored some of Gideon Zhi’s comments. While it acknowledged things were rocky between the site staff and Discord staff, it too has denied the doxxing accusations Nightcrawler made.
