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Have any websites that you used to check out often, but for whatever reason don't any more? Some news site, some movie review site, anything that used to be required viewing that disappeared off your radar?

With the rise of social media in the last few years it's made me curious as to which websites have weathered the storm, and which ones have outlived their usefulness to people... or maybe just disappeared altogether.

A few off the top of my head would be

Aint-it-cool-news
I used to go to that site regularly. Then I finally realized that the site was essentially a bulletin board/comment section for movie marks and industry outsiders who wished to be industry insiders. I haven't gone to that site in probably at least 3 or 4 years now.

TheDigitalBits
Back in the day it was the site to go to for dvd and digital video/audio news and tech stuff. Now physical media is dying out, and so are the websites dedicated to them. My dvd links and clicks have dropped off completely over the last couple of years.

Dark Horizons
Back when I still cared about movies, it was a good site to go to for movie rumors and reviews. Any gossip for casting, script sales news, and other type of movie info was housed there. Movie dirt sheet sites have since been gobbled up by social media and the TMZ crowd.

Rock Paper Shotgun
I bit my tongue over their commentary for as long as I could. For a while they provided pretty good info and critiques of games and game development. But their soapbox derby articles finally made me pull the plug on that link. Haven't gone to RPS in a year or two. If I want to go to a site a read about games, I should be able to go to RPS. If I want to read a 40,000 word dissertation on the ills of capitalism, I'll go to the Huffington Post.

Red 5
Probably one of the oldest Star Wars websites I remember going to. Long gone now. Red 5 started around 1994, and vanished soon after the special editions came out. Red 5 is my callback for being in the 'internet old school' club. I'm sure the internet archive has its links stored away, but I'll be damned to remember the URL.
The Linux Game Tome (happypenguin.org)
I used to hang out there a lot. I'm not a linux user, but there was a lot of interesting and experimental games there. But the site ran out of steam, and they pulled the plug in 2013. (archive org has an archive of the site)

planetphotoshop.com
I used to hang out on their old forum somewhere around 2002.

http://www.progressiveislam.org/
I lurked that site in 2008, when those stupid Muhammad drawings still were a topic. Now its long gone.
Post edited February 24, 2016 by KasperHviid
Piratebay
As a student with no money to buy anything online I usedto download games and other shit (you-know-what ;) )
After I got a small job and Torchlight I started to get giveaway games. Piracy was not fun anymore.
I waited for Steam/Gog/Origin Giveaways and even followed some websites who posted about that.
Once I got 2 Copies of Insurgency from Humble indie Bundle.
I gaveway extra copy to someone but he gave me a copy of Risk of Rain from another Humble Indie Bundle.
Then I came to know about Steamgifts. I tried to join it but it said I was NOT qualified as most of games were from official giveaway and you need a minimum amount of game to join steam gifts.
So, I kept collecting steam games.
One summer after 6 months of my hunting for giveaways Humble bundle gave Metro 2033 and I tried to join steamgifts and I was qualified.
Meanwhile I joined a small job.
A year after that I saw GOG forum.
It looked like fun place and I started to participate in forum activities.
Started to do trade and participating in giveaways.

Well, now I don't need to visit there for games as I have 400+ games LEGALLY on GOG, HumbleBundle, Steam and Origin in which 300+ games are on GOG alone!!!

I am proud that I am supporting gaming industry and not pirating games anymore.

To be honest it's the people here who inspired me to buy or get games legally.
I remember your names but can't mention you all as you all inspired me in one way or another.

Makeuseof
I still visit this website but not as frequently as I used to visit it.
I used to follow it before it got renovated. All the fun things were gone after it's renovation.
They used to have a reward program in which every solution, comments and referral gave you some points and you could use them to buy T-Shirt, Softwares, etc.

Gog.com
Forums are more fun than the homepage. :P

Steam
Never visit it unless I have to do some serious things (like redeeming a giveaway :P).
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Emob78: Rock Paper Shotgun
I bit my tongue over their commentary for as long as I could. For a while they provided pretty good info and critiques of games and game development. But their soapbox derby articles finally made me pull the plug on that link. Haven't gone to RPS in a year or two. If I want to go to a site a read about games, I should be able to go to RPS. If I want to read a 40,000 word dissertation on the ills of capitalism, I'll go to the Huffington Post.
Maybe you could keep comments like this to the GG threads? See, I go to this site mostly for gaming. Surely you can relate?
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KasperHviid: Maybe you could keep comments like this to the GG threads? See, I go to this site mostly for gaming. Surely you can relate?
Not sure to laugh or cry... was it sarcasm?

Conflating GG with capitalism.
Mentioning 3 links in post 2, only 1 about gaming.
Asking the other to repress their expression, rather than ignoring or tolerating it.
IGN and then Gamespot mostly because they banned me at IGN for trolling I think, I'm just like that, I swear. I mostly don't care much about AAA titles anymore, Gog is a better resource. Pick up way more awesome stuff around here. Plus gaming websites flounder around pointlessly, here they actually have Deus Ex.

Steam I avoid like the Black Plague.

Manhunt Uncut, which they changed to a way lamer Project Manhunt. Since they are not making anymore Manhunt, kind of pointless.

Rockstar Newswire, not really much "news" if all you ever post is never ending GTAV online updates. Also you can only post "On topic" which amounts to a grand total of "Thanks Rockstar" or "Complaining at Rockstar"

Pinterest, was funny until, you must log in to view funny pictures... YOU MUST F**KING LOG IN!!!

I really only go to Wikipedia, Imdb, Cinemablend or here with you lovely peoples, and I admit Zergnet for standard waste of time internet articles. I'm starting to wish Cinemablend would not waste my bandwidth with shitty videos in every article. "People found our articles interesting, here, shove the new shitty cinemablend video department down your throat."
Post edited February 24, 2016 by bad_fur_day1
I recall visiting GameSpot a lot in the past, I especially liked their various "Best of year..." or "Best games you've probably overlooked..." lists. I am unsure why I stopped visiting it.

Then there was certain emulator site I think, but I don't even recall its name anymore. It probably doesn't exist anymore.

There was also one Finnish in-bred forum which had relatively low number of people (maybe two hundred people at best, including folks who visited very rarely) and low turnover, but it was all that more intense. There was no real theme for the forum, it was just an user-run forum for talking about anything.

Many of us ended up having real-life meetings together (mainly going to restaurants drink booze, or in the summer go to a park for barbecue (and drink booze)), new friends and enemies were made etc. Heck I even ended up having great sex with a couple of young nice ladies from that forum! (and while you might not believe it, they actually made the initiative, not me... well ok in one case I was maybe the more active party, but she came to talk to me first though in one of the face-to-face meetings, which later led to sex). Awww, the good times as a single...

In the end though the place became a bit too toxic and stagnated, to be frank. I made some personal enemies there too. I lost interest at some point. Several years later I recalled the site and decided to check whether it is still alive, to my amazement it still was. The community seemed to have shrunk even further, the same names were still discussing there as when I was around, and many were enemies (e.g. whenever they commented on each other's messages, they'd always be bitter, sarcastic and toxic). Meh.

Nowadays, my daily routine (web sites) means GOG.com forum, and checking news from hs.fi (Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish magazine). And maybe visiting youtube, mostly if someone has linked to it. It seems at this point I don't often visit many other sites for some reason, only if someone's link leads to some other site. EDIT: Wikipedia too, if I try to find information on something.
.
Post edited February 24, 2016 by timppu
SaveTheDoDo.com
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tinyE: SaveTheDoDo.com
They moved on: SaveTheEmu.com
All those download websites for tools, open source, shareware, that some day started replacing the standard downloads with downloader/web-installer crap and bundled the installers with toolbars, ad-ware and scareware.
Most notably SourceForge. The new owners have revoked this, I know. But too little, too late.
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Emob78: Rock Paper Shotgun
I bit my tongue over their commentary for as long as I could. For a while they provided pretty good info and critiques of games and game development. But their soapbox derby articles finally made me pull the plug on that link. Haven't gone to RPS in a year or two. If I want to go to a site a read about games, I should be able to go to RPS. If I want to read a 40,000 word dissertation on the ills of capitalism, I'll go to the Huffington Post.
I can't actually recall any articles like that. I've been visiting RPS daily for a few years now.
I guess I might've just skipped them.
IGN.com
I used to visit them for their Nintendo coverage a lot but starting around 2012 the site became less useful for coverage anyway and the editors were getting lamer and lamer. Not to mention the comments/forums were just awful anyway. The last good thing they did was Op Rainfall. So, I just stopped going there altogether. The only reason I ever go back there (I think I did this once to see if a rumor I heard was covered on any basis in a big website) is to check on things or to read old reviews of theirs (Steve Butts was a decent reviewer among other).

Gamespot.com
Similar story except go back to 2008/9 when the rest of the website would get updated and the Nintendo sections would not, even if there certainly was something they could have talked about. I only go back for the same reasons as listed for IGN. Some of my favorite reviewers worked for Gamespot (Greg Kasavin for one).

A bunch of anime sites that I don't list because I don't support that kind of behavior anymore.

I used to actually go to Nintendo's website a lot before it went all white and shiny. They used to show videos of new games and have descriptions of games older and new. I sometimes go there even now, but it's not every week and probably not every month.

WiiUDaily.com
For Wii U coverage before I owned a Wii U. Stopped going back because the commenters are generally unpleasant on almost any topic. And the staff were very hit or miss too. They could have been more professional also.

I went to certain newspaper sites more a good while ago like Pravda. I stopped because I don't do current events presentations anymore.
Old Man Murray.
Your men... are obsolete.
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Emob78: Rock Paper Shotgun
I bit my tongue over their commentary for as long as I could. For a while they provided pretty good info and critiques of games and game development. But their soapbox derby articles finally made me pull the plug on that link. Haven't gone to RPS in a year or two. If I want to go to a site a read about games, I should be able to go to RPS. If I want to read a 40,000 word dissertation on the ills of capitalism, I'll go to the Huffington Post.
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KasperHviid: Maybe you could keep comments like this to the GG threads? See, I go to this site mostly for gaming. Surely you can relate?
Why shouldn't people be informed of the bad behaviour from the hacks at RPS?