| URL | GameFront.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Video games |
| Registration | Not required |
| Owner | Break Media |
| Created by | GameFront, LP. |
| Launched | 1999 |
| Current status | Active |
GameFront is a video game website that provides patches, demos, modifications, and other user generated game related content.
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FileLeech was created by I/O Error Development and first launched in 1999. In 2001 FileLeech was renamed FileFront.com and re-launched. It was bought by the Ziff Davis Media Game Group in the late half of 2005.
On January 6, 2009, UGO acquired 1UP.com. FileFront was not part of the purchase and became part of the PC Magazine Digital Network.[1]
Ziff Davis Media entered chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March 2008. On March 26, 2009, Ziff Davis Media announced that FileFront site operations were to be indefinitely suspended on March 30, 2009. All of the Staff in Ziff Davis's Filefront division were made redundant at this time.[2] Due to this, a massive undertaking by a large number of the former FileFront employees and network staff to back up all the downloads for the network sites (formerly known as the FilesNetwork) was started.[3]
However, past March 30 and into April, the FileFront website appeared to continue working well, with no visible loss of hosted files. This led some people to believe that the announcement had been a poorly executed April Fools' joke. On April 2, 2009, the farewell message posted by Ziff Davis Media, was removed and replaced by a message from a consortium of former staff who had bought FileFront from Ziff Davis Media, informing users that FileFront had been bought from ZDM and saved from closure.
On February 11, 2010, Break Media acquired Filefront.[4]
On November 30, 2010, FileFront was renamed to GameFront.[5]
GameFront is currently one of the 1000 highest-trafficked websites according to Alexa.[6] The main focus of GameFront is to provide a download service to its users, from its Houston-based servers. In addition to this, GameFront also provides gaming-related news and articles. The news and articles were provided by Computer Gaming World, a sister-site and offspring from Ziff Davis Media.
The FileFront Network is a collection of over fifty-five specific game-related sites dedicated to providing news and files to its visitors. It was originally named FilesNetwork, and was launched in January 2000 by its founder, Jos Jongejan (aka Pro-Filer). It's very first game-specific site was SoFFiles covering Soldier of Fortune, today it is still as active at it was back in 2000 and it's one of the few surviving SoF sites. After FileFront purchased the Network in 2004, Pro-Filer remained as the manager of FileFront Network. Each one of these sites has its own unique color scheme and style, but the layout maintains the fundamental principals of each other network site to provide a uniform feeling from site to site. Typically each network site will be named after the game it provides for, usually in abbreviated form, along with the suffix 'files'. For instance, the network site catering for Half Life 2 is called 'HL2Files' and the site for the game Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis uses 'OFPFiles'. Each site may also be accessed via a subdomain which is typically formatted as 'gamename.filefront.com'. These sites are usually run by administrators and volunteers. The Network is constantly expanding and shrinking as new games are released and older games die out, leaving new sites to be created and older ones to be archived.
Due to the nature of these sites, people who create unofficial add-ons for the game, or "modders", are a large part of the community as well as the players who wish to stay informed about things related to that game. The sites also provide patches and updates for the games they cover, as well as trailers and demos for upcoming games. FileFront Network sites tend to launch in the weeks coming up to a game's release, however occasionally sites launch on a games release date or later. Each site has a corresponding forum for discussions such as help with games' technical issues and clan recruitment as well as general chat about the game. Every FileFront Network site's forums are located on FileFront Forums, which is an area separate from FileFront Network.
The FileFront Forums are a large community of around 4 million posts and close to 200,000 members covering a range of countries, ranging from gamers discussing upcoming game releases to members debating in The Pub about politics and life, as well as general browsers looking for something that interests them. As such, the forums are not limited to just game-related discussion, but also general topics such as sports, art and graphics.
Originally, the forums were a combination of FilesNetwork's (predecessor to FileFront Network) forums, IO Error's forums, and Voodoo Extreme's (VE3D) forums. Posts date back to 1998. FileFront's Forums have been through several different names and incarnations, including Gaming Forums, and FileFreak Forums.
The FileFront Forums are governed by forty-five moderators, seven super moderators, and five administrators. These members have the ability to edit, delete, move and merge threads and posts made within the forum, and the administrators control the technical aspects of the site.
A section of the forums is dedicated to users' images, called the Image Gallery. Here, users are able to upload their own images and write a description about them. Larger questions about graphics are placed in The Graphics Department forum, where a group of members called the FileFront Graphics Team offers advice.
Users requiring technical help with their computers often make use of the Tech Discussion forum, where articles about technology itself are also written.
GameFront does fully support most download managers and also supports multiple connections for enhanced speeds on slower connections up to a limit of 4 connections at a time.