RIP NRDB

trustworthym 1382

thanks for all your hard work, alsciende.

here's one more goofy deck before the site shuts down. please use some of this ice to protect your servers from lawsuits.

20 comments
12 Sep 2014 moonwalker

no reason to shut down a website that:

  • does not take revenue away from FFG
  • does not make revenue of its own from FFG intellectual property

They could have just requested to watermark the card images or to reduce their quality, if that was their concern.

12 Sep 2014 FreshlyCrusher

I would much rather FFG just acquired NRDB or at least partner with it. This site does nothing but help the Netrunner community, which only helps FFG sell more products. FFG should be assisting this site, not hurting it.

12 Sep 2014 echorust

Is there anyone specific at FFG we could/should petition?

12 Sep 2014 StitchInTime

This is insane. Long live NRDB

12 Sep 2014 Kenan

There's two avenues I know of: First is the change.org petition that is linked at the top of the page. The second is to go to Fantasy Flight's User support page and lodge a complaint. I filed mine under the Public Relations and Press Inquiries department as that seemed to be the most appropriate considering this is a PR issue for FFG with the Netrunner community.

12 Sep 2014 Masterkira

Alsciende thank you for all, i hope for a solution..

12 Sep 2014 Alsciende

Thank you @bionicsheep, you made laugh hard :-)

You're awesome, all of you. I'm so glad I did this website to help the community thrive, and I hope so much that we'll find a solution to keep netrunnerdb.

12 Sep 2014 ryson282

Alsciende, maybe you could migrates on a server that is inside a country that is outside FFG legal reach... Like in spy movies...

12 Sep 2014 FreshlyCrusher

Migrating to a foreign country seems like a last resort. In keeping with the traditions of Netrunner, I think FFG should host it on one of their servers. Then, we should have to hack through any security systems they have in place to use the site.

12 Sep 2014 BaronZilar

Maybe it isn't real. Maybe it was a Frame Job to give them some Bad Publicity.

12 Sep 2014 7thson

Thing to do here is get a dialog going about what might allow the site to survive; removing card images, paying a licensing fee, or just asking for a job and integrating what you have with what they have. Seems like something should be possible. In the end , these IP issues come down to a 'use it or lose it' situation where they have to assert their rights or they waive their ability to.

12 Sep 2014 FreshlyCrusher

I agree. It's hard to think of what comes next when we don't know exactly what FFG doesn't like. If it's just images, that's a fairly easy fix. If it's something else, who knows? Maybe the community could help figure something out. I certainly wouldn't mind contributing some of my expertise with web development.

13 Sep 2014 federicolatini

If FFG take down this I'll have a recurring credit each run I make against their servers, that will be such a bad publicity for them. Overall I hope they are smarter than that!

14 Sep 2014 Wimpgod

Alsciende, the knowledge that I have gained playing other people's decks and tweaking this or that, reading the discussions, has been awesome. YOU are awesome! :) I hope FFG will work with you and keep this knowledge base for ANR accessible for us all. I've bought 2 core sets and 2 of every data pack realeased, from my LGS. NetrunnerDB makes this game so much more fun and interesting to play. Good luck to you and yours, my friend. :)

14 Sep 2014 Leviathan

I really don't want to see this site die! It's a great tool. A HUGE boon to the community.

It could be the high res card art and soliciting of donations went too far. I realize Alsciende needs to eat, but collecting revenue in any way from another company's IP is pretty ballsy. :)

I really hope Alsciende and FFG can come to some sort of arrangement. I wish Alsciende the best of luck and in a worst case scenario I will be hosting the open source version of netrunnerdb on my own server for personal use, haha.

14 Sep 2014 FreshlyCrusher

I feel that the most likely scenario is that FFG is positioning itself to have more of an online presence for its games. I mean, if that isn't the case, websites like NetrunnerDb only serve to increase Netrunner's revenue for FFG (and at no cost to FFG). But since FFG is trying to reign in all these sites, it's probably intending to so something with it that it couldn't do before.

I wouldn't be surprised if FFG came out with a LCG or Netrunner-specific game client that allow users to create decks with high-quality images and play with them online against others.

If this is the case, that certainly doesn't justify FFG's actions here. I would like to see them at least acknowledge NRDB's contribution. But that remains to be seen.

16 Sep 2014 SlayerCNV

FFG scorched us.

11 Oct 2014 federicolatini

welcome back I'd say!

2 Mar 2016 Seanwhat

how will salvage help defend against the lawsuit? it's the worst ice in the game.

2 Mar 2016 trustworthym

@Seanwhat Well, it worked didn't it?