retRO has shutdown

[wasajin]

I'd like to share with our community the discord announcement:

[GM] Deja — Today at 6:13 PM
@everyone
Dear players.

We are very, very sorry to tell you that we are closing retRO.

The current circumstances are too much for us to handle and we do not want to have an uncomfortable feeling in our stomach with each passing day.

There is much we had planned for the server to make it a better home for everyone enjoying the classic version of the game.
Unfortunately it will not come to this anymore and it breaks our hearts.
We put so much time and effort into this project and if it was only for us to decide, we would have run the server for many more years.

We had a very long meeting yesterday, analysing and speculating about the situation. In the end we came to the conclusion that it would be best to us to take retRO down.

The risk of being sued by the company would existentially threaten the four of us in our lives and, to some extent, our profession. Whether the legal steps would be justified in the end plays a secondary role in this. Even if we were to win, we would still suffer considerable damage.

It pains us to no end to take the server away from you, our great and kind community! You also put so much time into leveling your characters, farming cards and gear, building guilds and organising parties and events.
You put so much trust in us, believing that this will be the one server to finally settle down. And now... Now we have to disappoint you all.

Sorry for all this and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for staying with us until the end! ❤️

The server will be taken down with immediate effect.

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Please let us know if you want us to delete your data from our database.

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One last time:

retRO Staff

I wonder if it's just an overreaction by everyone or... even RMS will cease to exist anywhere else besides in our hearts.

[OldPoring]

I wonder if it's just an overreaction by everyone or...

The new generation is very timid. Very. If we had had such a generation 15 years ago, we would not have received a single private server at all.
As I understand it, they didn't receive any notification, just in case.
I wonder who will remain after the wave of servers self-destruction. I'm betting on Nova. I think they're tough guys)

[Prussian]

Rest in peace my friend 

[neethree]

I guess they will try to make examples of large servers and put the scare on everyone else.

And so the prophecy came true... I have to say I'm surprised at how well at it worked. Feels like everyone's tripping over themselves to prematurely kill their servers.

Just want to remind everyone in the midst of this panic that the only server they've actually gone after is Nova - which is not only one of the biggest servers but one of the biggest profiteers... and, you know, who registered themselves as a goddamn company and were claiming copyright while using Gravity's logo.
I bet Gravity are laughing their asses off right now... one lawsuit, they didn't have to interact with anyone else, and everyone is voluntarily folding. This is the best situation they could have ever hoped for, lmfao... jeez. 

[OldPoring]

I bet Gravity are laughing their asses off right now... one lawsuit, they didn't have to interact with anyone else, and everyone is voluntarily folding. This is the best situation they could have ever hoped for, lmfao... jeez. 

Absolutely. Servers are closed without donations and with 30 live people. Come to your senses, what are you afraid of? The maximum that hypothetical"judgment" will be able to decide is the same thing that you already do yourself - close your server. Respect yourself and your work

[BlankAndWhite]

Absolutely. Servers are closed without donations and with 30 live people. Come to your senses, what are you afraid of? The maximum that hypothetical"judgment" will be able to decide is the same thing that you already do yourself - close your server. Respect yourself and your work

nah you simply don't get it.

It's not that they are afraid of but it's also a good reason for them to finally get out of it. Many created servers as hobby but they can't just randomly close their servers because there are people who already spend time playing on these servers. But running a server has cost. No matter how small it is, in the end it could just be a burden for them and they don't know how to get out. So why keep on running it when you finally have a good way to justify closing it?

Some bigger server decided to quit because they can be targetted. Some will be used as an example here and if you are an owner of a huge server and you are living your life comfortably with a stable job, family and other business they won't be retarded enough to risk those. Getting sued for your hobby is not worth it.

[Playtester]

Absolutely. Servers are closed without donations and with 30 live people. Come to your senses, what are you afraid of? The maximum that hypothetical"judgment" will be able to decide is the same thing that you already do yourself - close your server. Respect yourself and your work

I believe at minimum you would need to pay your and Gravity's lawyer costs even if you are non-profit, no?

[RebirthOfficial]

Absolutely. Servers are closed without donations and with 30 live people. Come to your senses, what are you afraid of? The maximum that hypothetical"judgment" will be able to decide is the same thing that you already do yourself - close your server. Respect yourself and your work

The only 2 servers sued in the past were both running AEGIS. Both had judgements against them and Gravity was able to reclaim over $100,000 USD by seizing their personal assets. The owners also spent a few years in prison. So no, the server getting closed is not the worst thing that can happen.

[tatamoh11]

People who are saying the owners are closing down prematurely don't understand the gravity of the situation. (Happy accident) Even if hypothetically, gravity doesn't go for you and your server, will you be ok about carrying the burden of knowing sooner or later you will be next. Its like wearing a target on your back and advertising it. In my opinion, no sane human being will risk their professional career and their lives just to own a server that might earn you a few hundred bucks a year if your lucky.   

[OldPoring]

In my opinion, no sane human being will risk their professional career and their lives just to own a server that might earn you a few hundred bucks a year if your lucky.   

As for the server's profit, the RetRO creators stated that they were not interested in finances. Yes, in the USA and Western Europe, people can afford to invest money in their hobby, not for money profit, and this allowed us to hope for an "eternal server".
But yes, wrong to blame them for fear. Ok.

I just don't understand why right now this tactic of Gravity has worked so destructively. It worked. Why it didn't work before? What they did wrong all this years )) After all, it was possible to nip all hit private servers in the bud in early 2005-2015. So simple!

[Playtester]

I just don't understand why right now this tactic of Gravity has worked so destructively. It worked. Why it didn't work before? What they did wrong all this years )) After all, it was possible to nip all hit private servers in the bud in early 2005-2015. So simple!

I assume they didn't file lawsuits before because, unlike NovaRO, most private servers weren't actually a registered company (LLC) you can sue.
But I'm not an expert.
And it's really hard to tell with a sample size of "1".

Maybe Gravity can't (or won't) do s*** against non-profit non-company servers and everybody is "overreacting". Maybe they will.
Maybe them sueing 13 servers was a lie and they're only setting one "example", maybe not and information will pop up in time.
And nobody even knows what will happen to Nova yet. Will it even come to trial? Will he win? Will he lose?

But it's also about your own mental health. If you're scared to death every time you check your letter box and can't sleep at night, even if the fear might not be warranted, it's probably better for you to do whatever it takes so you feel safe again.

[tatamoh11]

I just don't understand why right now this tactic of Gravity has worked so destructively. It worked. Why it didn't work before? What they did wrong all this years )) After all, it was possible to nip all hit private servers in the bud in early 2005-2015. So simple!

Who knows? Maybe because of the way the big servers reacted. If im a server owner and I see what talonRO did or what other big servers are doing, ill also be fearful. If gravity can make a 500 to 2000 population server close up shop what can they do to my small to mid size server? Fear tends to be Instantaneous. or perhaps the very real lawsuit succeeded in what it was intended to be. If your going to war, why go with a knife if you have a tank. Gravity just whipped out its big **** and now everyone is listening. They dont even need to sue anyone anymore, because the threat alone is enugh. I guess the internet and social media did its part also, if i remember correctly, 5 to 10 years ago some big thai private servers got raided and closed but the news was not wide spread, but now anything that happens on the other side of the planet can reach anywhere within seconds.

[Khinaya]

Within law it is possible to sue non-profitable servers. The foundation can be seen as illegally holding up a property of game server(s) without the consent of the company. Which is supported by the game leak 19 years ago. In most cases the non-profit ones do go unnoticed/intentionally ignored as long as they have a disclaimer that this is strictly for fun and acknowledging that this is property of Gravity, especially considering that the old client is no longer in use. Gravity at this point can literally say that private servers are holding back the actual game(even if untrue).

People can be in the opinion that this is a bad move to impulsively remove individual servers, and it is a valid argument, but it cannot be blamed on “sensitivity of a newer generation” as this is a term that does not exist in the real world, as humans are evolving forward with each generation more smarter than the previous generation. At risk this goes into politics/offtopic so I am going to drop it here. Either way, people are not going to risk their lives for a hobby. Doing so can be dangerous for their livelihood. It simply isn't worth a big battle to keep something that may have to go down eventually.

[Phanneh]

I believe at minimum you would need to pay your and Gravity's lawyer costs even if you are non-profit, no?

Absolute minimum if you go 100% full madlad style and represent yourself is Gravity's lawyer costs.

In America, those can be brutal.

Of course, representing yourself in a situation like this takes your chances of losing from 99.9% to 100%, but hey, that's not so much of a difference.

[RebirthOfficial]

I assume they didn't file lawsuits before because, unlike NovaRO, most private servers weren't actually a registered company (LLC) you can sue.
But I'm not an expert.
And it's really hard to tell with a sample size of "1".

The only thing having an LLC does is make it easier to sue people related to the server. If there is no business entity it can be harder to sue related people because you need to file suits in their jurisdiction. With an LLC in play you can sue everyone from one location.

Questions I'm seeing asked often on Reddit and other places are, "Why NovaRO?" and, "Why didn't they go after rAthena?" My response to this is, "What if they are?" The emulators on their own would be difficult to sue because they don't really use any of Gravity's IP and due to the crowd sourced development it would be difficult to rope everyone into a single jurisdiction. Gravity would likely have to sue each dev individually.

However, as I've explained, because of the LLC, anyone associated with anything they did can be pulled into the local jurisdiction/court that Gravity is suing in. Gravity has 10 yet unnamed defendants in the case. NovaRO has fewer than 10 devs and more than 10 staff, so those 10 are unlikely the staff of NovaRO. Nova is listed as an rAthena dev, he goes by the same name ("Nova"), he has NovaRO as his profile picture on rAthena, and that makes it pretty easy to prove that the rAthena staff knew he was running NovaRO.

Imagine your friend asks you if they can borrow your car, you say yes. Your friend then uses your car to rob a bank. You didn't know that was going to happen and lending your car to someone isn't usually illegal, so there is no issue here. However, if your friend said, "I need money so I'm going to rob this bank, lend me your car." and you did it, well, now you've become an accessory the robbery. Even though the act of lending your car out isn't normally illegal, you did it knowing an illegal act would be committed with it.

Using this same logic, it is possible that Gravity intends to pull the rAthena devs into the NovaRO case, arguing that they are accessories that knowingly aided Nova in committing the crimes they allege. While it may be possible for the devs to fight this, they would have to hire lawyers to do so, and even possibly travel to California themselves. For many, this may not be financially possible and they will lose the case by default.

Now, it's entirely possible this is incorrect, no one knows Gravity's intentions right now but Gravity. However, it is possible this is their plan and why they are suing this particular server at this particular time. While other servers have had devs on both the server and emulator project this is one of the first very popular servers where the owner of the server was a dev. Prior to this, it was typically a dev in a lower position within the server.