Online art communities around the web have been shocked to learn that CGHub has officially shuts its doors for good. CGHub was a rapidly growing community born of necessity following the decline of Marko Djurdjević's popular Conceptart.org. In the wake of a DDOS attack protesting the site's new premium memberships and a hack
that rerouted traffic to the domain CGHugs.com, site developers posted an announcement on Facebook that CGHub was closing it's doors for good yesterday.
This message was posted to Facebook by the site's development team (but not owners):
The attack and hack are believed to have been the culmination of a growing tide of discontent among a subset of CGHub users who were vocally unhappy with the site's recent roll out of premium accounts designed to raise funds for the otherwise free-to-use community. I personally feel that the complaints were unwarranted as CGHub had been offering a fantastic service to the community for years at no cost whatsoever.
Unfortunately, the roll out of premium accounts prompted some serious backlash which spread very swiftly across social media as high profile artists accused CGhub of selling out.
Several days ago, premium users received an unexpected refund for the premium account, around the same time the website went down in an apparent hacker attack. Though users were initially confused, rumors of financial difficulties began to circulate like wildfire. These rumors appear to have been unfounded.
Even after the closure, users have continued to lash out against the team that so loyally supported the site over the past six years in a response that brought to mind the tantrums users pitched when Wikipedia shut down in support of an anti-SOPA protest last year.
People, this is why we can't have nice things. Free isn't an actual business model, and the people with the tech savvy to run the communities that we take for granted have just as much right to a pay check as you or I.
A treasure trove of art is gone, and it's unclear how that void will filled. Worse, the increasing venom of the community's users can only serve to ward off others who might have been willing to take up the mantle of host. I'm left with a tempest of loss and shame in heart over the abrupt loss.
Following the circulation of negative reactions by the community, the site developers released a second message on Facebook in response:
Finally:
This message was posted to Facebook by the site's development team (but not owners):
The reason behind this extremely tough decision is personal and will remain private. It’s absolutely not connected with business or any kind of technical difficulties.
On behalf of development team I would like to apologize to CGHUB users and fans for abrupt project closure and delay with its announcement.
CGHUB wasn’t ideal, but we loved it SO MUCH! :*(
Team Shakuro
The attack and hack are believed to have been the culmination of a growing tide of discontent among a subset of CGHub users who were vocally unhappy with the site's recent roll out of premium accounts designed to raise funds for the otherwise free-to-use community. I personally feel that the complaints were unwarranted as CGHub had been offering a fantastic service to the community for years at no cost whatsoever.
Unfortunately, the roll out of premium accounts prompted some serious backlash which spread very swiftly across social media as high profile artists accused CGhub of selling out.
Several days ago, premium users received an unexpected refund for the premium account, around the same time the website went down in an apparent hacker attack. Though users were initially confused, rumors of financial difficulties began to circulate like wildfire. These rumors appear to have been unfounded.
Even after the closure, users have continued to lash out against the team that so loyally supported the site over the past six years in a response that brought to mind the tantrums users pitched when Wikipedia shut down in support of an anti-SOPA protest last year.
People, this is why we can't have nice things. Free isn't an actual business model, and the people with the tech savvy to run the communities that we take for granted have just as much right to a pay check as you or I.
A treasure trove of art is gone, and it's unclear how that void will filled. Worse, the increasing venom of the community's users can only serve to ward off others who might have been willing to take up the mantle of host. I'm left with a tempest of loss and shame in heart over the abrupt loss.
Following the circulation of negative reactions by the community, the site developers released a second message on Facebook in response:
We are getting tons of emails and from the comments to our recent post we think that we need to clarify some things and answer the most common questions.
1. Team Shakuro was NOT associated with Full Spectrum Digital, LLC - a company that ran CGHUB.com. We were actually only responsible for development and of course were not authorized to make decisions like shutting the project down. That also means that we were not making money from ads, pro accounts and so on.
However, since the real owners prefer to keep low profiles we are the only ones on the surface (to blame).
2. We were caught completely unprepared. It was as simple as: “Guys, it’s over”.
Why the shutdown was like this and without prior notification – we have no answer to this question and that’s also beyond our understanding.
3. Even though it wasn’t our decision to close the project, it was us who tried to reach the community with at least a bit of explanation of what was going on.
4. We tried every single option to keep the community running including buying it out, selling to somebody else, even pausing … it didn’t work.
Finally:
We started working on CGHUB 6 years ago, from the request “Hi, can you make a website that shows images?” and since then it has become our flagship project and there is nobody in this Universe who would love it and miss it more than we do. Some of our developers are still in disbelief of what has happened. We would never do any harm to this project / community. So we really hope for your understanding.
No more CGHUB. Someone will take the void. Good luck guys.
Team Shakuro
I, for one, would like to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone involved in creating and maintaining the site for all their years of service. For years, CGHub has been among the very first links I open each and every morning. It inspired this blog and others to which I contribute. Many of my my most popular posts have featured images discovered on CGHub galleries.
So, thank-you for the countless hours of web browsing. Thank-you for the many networking opportunities that have introduced me to new friends and colleagues. And most of all, thank-you for the untold artistic inspiration.
We should have appreciated you while we had the chance.
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