Help save 17 years of PC game modding history

One of the Web's oldest and largest repositories for classic and current PC gaming mods will be shutting down for good later this month. GameFront announced today that its servers will be going offline on April 30 and that "any files not downloaded by that time will no longer be accessible."

"Since our founding as FileLeech almost 20 years ago, we have always strived to offer the best file hosting alongside quality gaming content," former GameFront staffer Ron Whitaker wrote. "To all of our fans who have supported us throughout the years, we thank you for making us your destination for gaming files. Despite name changes, ownership changes, and staff changes, you have always made our jobs rewarding and fun."

The shutdown is a blow to those who rely on GameFront for access to tens of thousands of mods, demos, patches, tools, maps, skins, and add-ons for PC games dating back to the mid-'90s. It's especially significant to those looking for mods and patches for older games with smaller communities or defunct publishers, which can be hard or impossible to find elsewhere.

After April 30, those files will still be accessible by digging through the Internet Archive, which maintains a massive mirror of the site as it exists today and in the past. For those that want to see GameFront mods continue to be published and maintained in a more organized fashion going forward, though, fellow hosting site Mod DB has put out a call for users to back up and share GameFront-hosted files with them.

"We must unite as a community and preserve the mods that GameFront hosts which might otherwise be lost forever," Mod DB writes. "We are very worried that many amazing mods and addons shared only on GameFront will be lost in two weeks time after the closure. So we are calling on our entire community to help us preserve these files and make them available forever... Mod DB would like to wish the team at GameFront the very best with their future endeavors and once again thank them for their contribution to the modding community."

When Ziff declared bankruptcy in 2009, FileFront posted a farewell message and urged its community to "please take this opportunity to download [your files] before March 30th when the site will be suspended." The site was only saved by the last-minute efforts of founder Derek Labian and other staffers who backed up the entire database and bought the site from the crumbling Ziff Davis.

In 2010, FileFront was purchased again by Break Media (which later merged with Escapist and Smosh owner Alloy Digital to form Defy Media) and renamed to the more general GameFront. But GameFront's finances have been looking rough for a while now; the entire editorial and video staff was laid off just over a year ago, and a network of more than 50 affiliate sites was shut down last July.

No specific reason was given for GameFront's final closure this month (and Defy Media hasn't responded to a request for comment), but fellow Defy Media acquisition GameTrailers was also recently shut down after 13 years of providing game-related video content. Over the years, GameFront's most popular files have been downloaded millions of times. Former members of the FileFront and GameFront communities are currently gathering in a massive forum thread to say their farewells to the storied site.