Not Quite a Perfect Time to Panic About Gameware
Yesterday, the Gameware Development domain expired and the site went down. Panic time! Not exactly, though. I contacted the company over on Facebook, and then realized I posted almost the exact same message almost a year ago! So although all of the content is currently unavailable, there is a pretty good chance that it should be back up and running within the next week. I meant to make backups of everything I could last year, and I completely forgot. LoneShee did an excellent job of archiving a lot of content, although there’s no guarantee that it was all saved. I also tried to get in contact with Gameware Europe. Hopefully it will be fixed soon!
Although not the best method, I did go through some cached pages to make a list of every available download from the original Gameware site. Archived versions of the site do include some backups, although it looks like many downloads are missing. Keep an eye out for more news about this situation, which will hopefully be resolved in the very near future! And when the site does return, I suggest making backups of both downloads and actual content to make sure that none of this information is ever lost. That would be a horrible thing for Creatures, indeed! I’ll post an update as soon as there is a change.
I am also in the process of trying to get an official statement about the Creatures Mall breed packs, which are no longer available for purchase, but which are also not technically authorized to be shared publicly. I’ve been through three different companies, at least five different people, and haven’t had any luck yet. I’m not giving up, though! I took a break from the search for a short time, but I’m still attempting to get somewhere. News about that will come if I get anywhere!
Images Credited to Gameware Europe
Thanks for the heads up. Hopefully they get the site up soon. Losing those programs really would be a big loss for the community.
Also, there’s a way of making the web archive site archive a site if the site is still up and there isn’t a page. So whenever the site is back up, it might be worth going through the site and making sure most/all of the important pages are archived.
I dropped the ball on making sure things were archived last year. I hope that it’s just a matter of Gameware flipping the switch somewhere, like last time! I will definitely make sure to get the archiving site to capture virtually everything. If I remember correctly, it took some time for things to come back last time. I would give it a good two weeks or so before I’ll start to worry. Although of course I’m a little worried right now… Just how I am, I suppose!
Hey Jessica! Glad to see the blog’s still doing well. I actually have most, if not all of the official content backed up – if the site doesn’t come back and you want to arrange hosting stuff, hit me up and I’ll send you what I have!
Nice to see you around again! I’m glad someone was on top of backing up everything! I’m going to give Gameware a couple of weeks to respond, since that’s what happened last time. I’m not sure about the legality of hosting the downloads, but I’ll be sure to get in contact with you for getting backups of things I never got. Thanks!