ROM Hacking Site Calls It Quits After Nearly 20 Years

ROMHacking.net has ceased its main operation.

By Logan Moore

ROMacking.net, a popular website for video game ROMs, fan translations, and bug fixes is shutting down after roughly 20 years. Since its launch, ROMhacking.net has served as one of the largest (and oldest) sites on the internet for archiving ROMs from Nintendo, PlayStation, Sega, Atari, Xbox, and other platforms. Now, the site is set to cease its main form of operation, although it will continue to stick around as a news platform. 

In a new post on the site, ROMhacking.net's founder, only known as Nightcrawler, revealed that the site would be ceasing operations right away. Nightcrawler said that they were choosing to shut down the website's ROM submission function for a variety of reasons. For starters, it was said that the site has already gone far beyond what it was ever expected to do and has achieved many milestones since launching. Additionally, Nightcrawler said the internet has expanded to where the need for ROMhacking.net is now lessened compared to many years ago. Nightcrawler also claimed that they tried to previously hand off the site to another group, but personal "lines were crossed" that resulted in this decision to end operations. 

"It's been a good near 20 year run, but for various reasons it's time to wind things down," Nightcrawler wrote. "The site achieved almost everything it set out to do, and far exceeded it. We joined hacking and translation communities together for the first time ever. We outlasted and eclipsed ROM hacking sites that came before us. We brought ROM hacking from niche and fragmented to global and centralized. We assembled the largest force of ROM hackers on the planet. We brought learning resources and accessibility to a much wider range of people. We made major progress legitimizing and pulling ROM hacking from underground dark web type material to something much more accepted by the mainstream. We paved a much easier path for all of those that will come after us. No doubt, this site changed ROM hacking forever. It will leave behind the legacy of those accomplishments to remember."

"Having gone from an unknown fledgling site to an infinitely growing and globally known one made sustainability very challenging. The site became so busy with 24/7 use, endless queues, and an endless inbox. It's a very different world than it was in 2005," the message continued. "The need for the site has lessened over time. There are now many options for community discussions, open source projects, and file storage across the Internet."

As for what happens to ROMhacking.net next, Nightcrawler says that it has passed its extensive database to the Internet Archive for preservation. News posts on the site will remain up, as will the accompanying forums. Other than this, all further Discord or X channels associated with the website have been deleted. Whether or not ROMhacking.net will return in a new manner in the future isn't yet known, but for now, this seems to be the end of a beloved gaming archive site. 

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