Is Armaholic Dead?

[Bombhead]

Just a couple of questions to the community at large:

 

1.  Is anyone else having issues finding any Armaholic pages?

2.  Is there really a place for Armaholic since Steam & BI got their shiz together and made mod management an almost seamless and painless process?

 

This has been posed by some recent Reddit posts where it is becoming apparent that a larger and larger group of people are turning away from Armaholic.  Vitriol by some aside, it does make me wonder if Armaholic is perhaps already dead.

[Stanhope]

I occasionally go to their forum for some aid on scripting, not a lot tho as most questions have already been asked on the BI forums.

 

And I look at the main page from time to time to see if there are any new interesting mods/scripts.

[V_Berlioz]

Centralization of modding resources is never a good thing, especially when the aforementioned central structure is in the hands of Valve. Armaholic is making a number of god-awful business decisions and is in the process of causing their own deaths, when in truth, they should have acquired permanent loyalty with heavyweights like the RHS and Unsung crews through diplomacy.

 

As it stands, there are now three ways to get Arma III mods.

 

1. Steam Workshop, for just about everything besides the below things.

2. Google Drives, for things such as the KA Weapons Pack.

3. VK.com, for exotics and DMCA'd content like EPSM, Star Wars: Opposition, and ME:O.

 

According to word on the street, there may be a small mod pirating outfit on TOR but that's a total outlier when it comes to practicality. I don't quite think we're at the stage yet where we need darknet mod distribution but there is no reason to assume Valve won't make that so a few years down the road. I have no current affiliation with any mod pirating group, for the record.

[Bombhead]

@V_Berlioz & @Stanhope Thanks for your thoughts,  I generally agree that having a single point of resource is a bad idea. Especially when the single point of resource is a corporation. 

 

I've used Armaholic on & off for years, struggled with Play With Six and also simply shared files across google drives.  My real question though was about Armaholic.  It has proved to be a fairly reliable (if horribly tiered) resource over the years but with the behaviour of the owner, the lack of modernisation of the site and the ridiculous fee of 75 euros a year it just seems to be imploding & generating some really bad feeling.  Let's hope some sense prevails here.

 

So the question still stands, Armaholic - dead man walking or walking wounded?

[Amentes]

As someone outside the mod circle, your description sure sounds like a recipe for death.

[V_Berlioz]

9 hours ago, Bombhead said:

@V_Berlioz & @Stanhope Thanks for your thoughts,  I generally agree that having a single point of resource is a bad idea. Especially when the single point of resource is a corporation. 

 

I've used Armaholic on & off for years, struggled with Play With Six and also simply shared files across google drives.  My real question though was about Armaholic.  It has proved to be a fairly reliable (if horribly tiered) resource over the years but with the behaviour of the owner, the lack of modernisation of the site and the ridiculous fee of 75 euros a year it just seems to be imploding & generating some really bad feeling.  Let's hope some sense prevails here.

 

So the question still stands, Armaholic - dead man walking or walking wounded?

Considering the course of discussion, I can see that none of us are privy to Armaholic's finances so I suppose it is only just to estimate their lifespan.

I give them a year at most (I'm being very generous) before they either make a serious strategic decision in this regard or they just shut down. They have no place in a community that no longer needs them. I just hope we don't lose anything of great importance.

 

I would start creating a backup archive of Armaholic now - a lot of mods there are 2013-2015 era and have not been updated in over a year yet are still functional. Furthermore, there is a lot of good A1-A2 content there that is worthy of porting to Arma III. If I were in control of Armaholic, I'd cut the cord next month.