nicolas2015alcubo wrote:A question: What programming language was used to write arcade games?. C/C++???
Please, try to make mame roms available to free registered users. I want to have roms to play with mame4droid.
That has nothing to do with your original request... I have no idea what language arcade games are programmed in.
Look, bud...
As much as I would love for this to happen, if we do that we will probably not be able to survive. None of us have the kind of money required to keep the site going if we lost a substantial portion of our revenue from donations, which access to the MAME sets delivers. So by making access to the MAME section available for free... we would probably not be around any longer. Maybe a couple of months, but that would be it. The reality behind this situation is just that, and it is nothing any of us would ever want to see happen.
It runs us a little over $6,000 USD per year to keep the server up and running all the time. There are only a handful of us who run the site, and only the owner has access to make the changes for the request that you are asking of us. One man, and it is his dream that has been alive since 1999... I don't think he wants to see his dream abruptly ended all because of one decision, such as this one. We all came into that dream just within the past 5 years. We all have jobs, lives, and families outside of this website that we have to provide for... and that uses all of our money leaving us with nothing to use to keep the site running. We need those donations every month in order to continue to provide for all of the end users of the world the way we do. We operate strictly as a non-profit site, for the love of archiving video game history and for the satisfaction of end users like you who don't have to traverse an ad-laden site like cool-rom or rom-world just to find a couple of ROMs... to then be blocked behind a vote for us barrier that they then have to jump through in order to get a simple ROM.
Please understand that this is just how we have to operate. We'd love more than everything for the access to all sections on the site to be completely free, with no ads or vote-for-us crap that the other sites have... but we just simply can't and continue to operate.
Another method people have been suggesting for us to do so that we can unlock the sections and continue to make revenue to keep the site afloat is to load the pages with ads again. Unfortunately ads aren't a reliable source of income for our site simply because with something like Adblock Plus (which a solid 60% to 70% of internet users use) those ads aren't even seen by those using it. So it would be a substantial loss for us to move in that direction once again.
Statistically 22.7% of internet users were blocking ads back in 2013... with a projected 43% growth per year... it's been two years. 22.7% + 43% + 43% = 108.7% of internet users using ad-blocking methods. Now while this value obviously isn't true, it shows that at least a solid 60% to 70% of internet users are blocking ads in some shape or form.
Here is an excerpt from that same article where I got those ad-blocking statistics:
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/21/use-of-ad-blocking-is-on-the-rise/
If [this data is] accurate, it shows that consumers are finding their own ways to avoid annoying and/or privacy-invasive ads, rather than waiting for government intervention over online tracking and ad targeting — which may never come.
But the desire for privacy and/or a faster, cleaner surfing experience comes at a cost to publishers.
“One typical PageFair client site suffers from 25% adblocking, costing them nearly $500,000 per year,” says the report. PageFair CEO Neil O’Connor explains that the publisher has 90 million page views per month with a $2 CPM.
“The pool of people who will accept ads is smaller and smaller and those ads get more aggressive and intrusive to target them, and then those people get annoyed and seek out ad blockers,” says O’Connor. “It’s a vicious cycle.”
“Most people who use Adblock don’t realize it’s mom-and-pop shops that are going to be hurt,” says Destructoid’s Gonzalez. “Privacy businesses make their money by taking money away from us. They’re really throwing us under the bus.”
This is all I really have to say for this issue. Do you understand what I'm trying to explain here? I just don't want you to think badly of us for how we have to run the show as it were.
by nicolas2015alcubo » Fri Feb 20, 2015 11:08 pm 
