Yes, RYG has closed it’s doors… but a few important things are now being hosted here for those that care or need it.

If you don’t want to read all of this, then scroll down to read the TL;DR

RYG wasn’t making any impact or headway in anything in any way. Pretty much everyone had left the forum over the years, for many reasons. Many think we turned-coat (sold out to the devil) by registering RYG as a business back in 2010, which in fact was done to see if the publishers, etc, would take us more seriously if they knew we weren’t going to go away any time soon. Anyway, there was only a small handful of members that remained and that’s just not enough for what we needed to do.

In 2010 I moved to Sydney (away from all of my family and friends) and put my home into debt with the bank (took out a mortgage against it) to get the business of RYG started (with Martin), registered it, trademarked the name & logos, paid accountants fees, etc… Not counting having to pay out for server fees each month and games to evaluate (most of which we would never have purchased and played normally).. Then you have the PC’s to buy and / or upgrade to do the evaluations on, the programs to do the evaluations right with, the yearly registration of the business, the yearly domain name fee for RYG and the continuing accountants fees & taxes, etc. It all adds up to a LOT each year and it’s impossible to do on only one wage. We had hoped to at least earn enough to cover the costs of RYG and hopefully enough for Martin to quit his job to work on RYG full time. Sadly that hadn’t happened, we’d gotten nothing (ZERO) at all for all the work we’ve put into it.

We had hoped to be able to work with publishers and developers to ensure the games were being released as close to consumer friendly as possible and turn them into the good guys of gaming, but sadly that hasn’t happened no matter how hard we tried. In the process I’ve since had to sell my home to keep up with everything and pay back the bank and pay off all other debts incurred over the years of trying to do this right.

I have taken care of RYG Almost Every Day without fail, even on my kids birthdays, on my daughter’s wedding day, Christmas day each year… even on my wedding day and on my honeymoon. I was dedicated to making this work for all the right reasons.

But simply put, most gamers just don’t care anymore, they just buy up the games they want, even when they know they have issues… How do you fight that? How do you fix that? How do you help with that? How do you help people who just don’t care?

And for all those out there that accused us over the years of ‘having an agenda‘… yes, we did, because every plan or goal has an agenda, it all depends on that plan or goal if it’s for the good or not. Well, it was always for the good of the gamers. I never lost sight of that.

Mostly the only visits we got on a regular basis were Bots.. LOTS of Bots. Even when we had big hits to RYG (in May last year) over the SecuROM mess with Cities XL 2012 and SecuROM and again (July last year) with The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection and SecuROM. Then we found SecuROM used for Sims 4 in September last year, but it all died down fast and all we got was a lot saying it was all BS and we were just trying to stir up trouble to get noticed. It’s been no different to so many other times with other games (eg, Dragon Age 2, Dead Space 2, Medal of Honor 2010, Mass Effect 3) when we found out companies had not told gamers about things they should have. Well, when people don’t care or believe us, there is no point doing what we do. I kept going because I hoped things would change for the better, but I was obviously deceiving myself… maybe even delusional.

The simple fact is, RYG was dead… end of story. To keep it going was only going to torture me and make things worse over time. I’ve already lost everything, my home, savings and been away from my family long enough. There is/was nothing more for me to give. I’ve given it my best shot but it hadn’t been enough.

A little over 6 years ago, Kath (Saraswati)wanted to close RYG down (it was hers to do it), I convinced her that people still needed RYG. Kath then gave it to me to continue the fight, although now I see she was probably right all along.

The main fact is, right from the beginning of 2008 until now, my intentions for RYG never changed. Circumstances and having to evolve over time has changed, but the end goal never moved, not once! Not once did we lose sight of our vision to make things in gaming right for our fellow gamers.

Anyway, I want to keep a few things going at least for a while… they are under the menu *ProjectRYG* and they will be the Evaluation reports that had been done up until last December when we published our last one, the SecuROM Removal Tutorial for those that still need it, and the SecuROM 7+ games list, but that’s it- A Barebones RYG. If at any point I see those are no longer needed (no one is viewing them), I’ll remove them from here too.

Another reason that helped me make my decision to close RYG is…

It was Good Old Games… yes, GOG. As some of you may know, GOG launched something new recently, but what you may not have realised is that they did it in a really dirty way. They chose to ride on RYGs name to get more business and top search hits… So now when you Google Reclaim Your Game, you mainly get GOG hits.

We contacted them and in their reply, they said they didn’t even know about us.

Thanks for getting in touch with us directly. We did not know about your business until we received your email, but we have now reviewed your email and website.

Yeah, sure.. of course they didn’t. They only came to us a few times for some advice so why would they remember us?? So, the very people I thought were trying to do right, showed me they are no different to the rest of the money grabbing, uncaring companies out there..

Do I care if posting about this makes me look bad? Nope, not one bit…I’m past caring.

I have no more money to fight this battle and when this kind of thing happens after everything else over the years, I give up… So I’m walking away and I hope someone else will find the fight inside of them to try fighting for Gamers Rights like we did… and I sure hope they have a bigger bank account than I did.

Finally, I would like to say thanks for all your support over the years. There have been MANY who believed in us, but sadly there weren’t enough of you to help make a difference, so we couldn’t achieve our goal of making gaming a better experience for gamers and I’m really sorry for that.

Anyway, it wasn’t all a total loss.. By moving to Sydney in 2010 to take RYG that one step further, I found some awesome places to eat at and visit… My fav of all times to go eat at is Hurricane’s Grill & Bar at Bondi Beach, not just for the food, but the staff are also amazing people… My most fav place to visit is the Chinese Garden of Friendship at Darling Harbour, which is so beautiful and peaceful.

All in all, I’ve learned a lot over the years and experienced things that I never thought I would, but even as this ends, I’m glad of all of it… it’s helped me be who I am today.

TL;DR …All RYG wanted to do was fight for gamers, but most gamers don’t care enough to fight for their rights. Most publishers and developers don’t care about gamers enough to not shove DRM into their games, enforce online registrations & online connections, to release half made or badly broken games, to not fill games with paid DLC’s, etc.. Whatever we do, it hasn’t made a difference to any of that, so there is no point continuing with RYG. I have given up my home and been away from my family for long enough… I made some great friends along the way (I’ve also lost some too), but it’s now time to say goodbye.

Thanks for the ride, it’s been fun, but now it’s time to get off.
-Lisa Pham