Yeah, I just said it, and this is about the Game Rail sponsorship that we got from them when they were just starting to go public with their Game Rail clients.
I got an email from Game Rail about them hosting public servers for communities that will help them advertise the brand. Basically, then give your community game servers and you have to at least put a ‘Game Rail’ word in the hostname. Dave Derington was one of Game Rail’s employees and he was overseeing the Game Rail events.
So I was like, awesome. It’s a deal then, this will not only boost the amount of servers PGN has to offer its members, but it will also help Game Rail’s name out there (If you don’t know yet, the PGN servers are ranked as one of the most popular servers in the world*). Everything was well, in fact it was great. We got four servers from them. The only problem is that I can’t directly access the serves unlike a GSP (Game Server Provider) through a FTP, SSH, or SFTP. But Dave Derington was a very nice guy and I can just send him the files, and he’d update the servers from me.
- 208.75.26.71:27015 #PGN Classic (GameRail – TX)
- 208.75.30.71:27015 #PGN Death Match (GameRail – WA)
- 208.75.25.71:27015 #PGN Gun Game (GameRail – IL)
- 208.75.27.71:27015 #PGN Gun Game (GameRail – NY)
All of these servers ended up as one of the top ranked servers in the world, with #PGN Classic (GameRail – TX) being the most popular out of the Game Rail servers.
Then disaster strikes, Dave Derington (Game Rail Events Manager) resigned and is no longer working for Game Rail. Therefore, I don’t have my go-to guy anymore, no one will update the servers anymore.
So I asked Dave Derington if there was any guy that he knows that still works with Game Rail that I can go to update the server files from me. He said someone can help me since they know each other well. So I told myself, awesome! So I proceeded to talk to him who seems like he’s a really busy guy and he doesn’t respond to my private messages and he has never responded to the e-mails I sent him.
I then decided to post my issues with Game Rail in their forum, I asked them what’s up with Game Rail and PGN. And how come I’m being ignored by their new Events Manager. To my surprise, my post got deleted! You’re sneaky Game Rail, I never knew you’ll delete negative posts in your forum. I should have taken a screenshot of it. He then decides to contact me and he said that they’re just too busy right now since all their manpower is being directed to the release of their new client called Conductor. It’s in its early Beta stage right now and so there’s a lot of bugs being reported. He then said, as soon as the Conductor client is released, he’ll have the time to give me access to the Game Rail servers and he was thinking of SSH and/or SFTP. It was like Christmas for me and for PGN. The game servers will now be updated to the current PGN configurations. So I told myself, ok man…don’t bug him anymore, he already told you that he’ll do it as soon as Conductor goes out of beta and is released to the public.
And that’s what happened, I decided not to bother him and so I’ll just wait until they release the Conductor client. An adult’s promise is a promise right? I was talking to an adult, not a 10 year old kid.
After a couple of months, I asked him if they’re still busy. He said ‘Yes’ as usual but then he also told me that he can’t give me SSH/SFTP access anymore, since the servers are hosted in their backbone servers. So I thought to myself, oh well. But then it struct me…doesn’t Game Rail have I.T. techs? I’m pretty sure those are qualified techs and they know how to chroot my account so I can’t get out of my directory. They can also edit my apps access so I I can’t run certain commands. It’s a Linux server after all.
He then said that if I send him the update files, then he’ll update them servers. So I was a bit relieved about that since it’ll be just like last time, I sent him the files, he logs in the dedicated server, and installs the update files on the game server directory. Piece of cake, it should take less than 10 minutes on each server.
So I sent him all the files and I even gave him a username and password on my dedicated server so if he just wants to wget the file then he can do so. Days passed…nothing happens. Is he busy? Probably. Weeks passed…hmm maybe still. And then fast forward to now and the PGN servers hosted by Game Rail go down without notice. They never went back up.
You know what…I knew this was coming. I know Game Rail treated PGN like dirt. Guess what, we didn’t treat you like that. In exchange for your game servers, we’ll advertise your name in our portal. You got a total of 888,263 banner impressions with us, in less than 6 months. Sure, it may not be like those paid advertisements because I’m sure you can get more than that. But what I wanted to tell you is, we did our part.
I could have at least been informed that you’ll be shutting it down so I could publish a news in our portal about it. Nothing wrong with that, it just means the end of a PGN and Game Rail sponsorship program. That’s it. But no, you just ignored PGN while we were still keeping our promise.
Thanks Game Rail for hosting the PGN servers until you screwed up. You don’t have business ethics! Just because we’re a ‘community of gamers’ doesn’t mean that we don’t know how to hold on to our promises and that you have to treat us as dirt. Oh ignore them, they can’t really affect us as a company. They’re just a gaming community.
We’re a gaming community that’s more mature than your company.
* Game-Monitor.com, GameTracker.com, ServerSpy.net
Tags: Dave Derington, Game Rail, PGN, SFTP
