I've just found this in an F1 forum:
45 Days of Relay Being Down - A Company's Exercise in Frustration.
Over the past 45 days, Relay Game Network has been offline and speculation
regarding its return has become rampant. I feel it pertinent to now explain
to our users what is happening, why we are down, when we expect to be back
up, and why we haven't said anything to date.
Firstly I would like to explain that hosting these websites, and in
particular large download files, costs an enormous amount of money each
month in bandwidth. As a result, Relay sought out a company that required
our expertise with bandwidth on their account as payment for our numerous
technical services we provided them.
This arrangement was working well (with the exception of some unethical
renegotiating by the provider on numerous occasions) until November 1, 2002.
The significance of this date is that it is the date Relay went dead.
Many people asked "What happened? Did EA shut them down? Etc., etc." The
truth of the matter is this:
Our provider didn't pay their bill at the Tier 2 ISP (our provider was a
tier 3 provider). As a result, their servers, and our servers, were held as
collateral on their bill. Needless to say, we aren't very happy about this
and we have tried everything under the sun to get immediate retrieval of our
servers. The unfortunate part is that the ISP is deciding to play a bit
tough, in hopes that we'll pay the bill I guess.
As a result, we have 2 options;
1) Wait it out and negotiate with the Tier 2 ISP (which we are currently
doing), or
2) Take the ISP and everyone else involved to court and sue them for
downtime and return of our property.
Of course #2 is something we are considering and preparing for, but we are
making some ground on #1 as well. So before we burn any bridges that we need
left open, we've decided to wait another 48 hours on a decision from the
ISP.
That is where Relay is at right now. The reason we have been unable or at
least hesitant to post anything online regarding this event is that the
inevitable question of "When will you be back online?" arises. My experience
in the past is that whilst people speculate rampantly when faced with a lack
of information, those speculations are often more desirable than what the
"Soon Syndrome" produces. When you say soon 3 times. people give up on it,
etc. and revolt against those who say "soon" to them.
As a result, we have remained quiet in the pursuit of our servers. We are
making headway, but we are not in control of the timing, so I cannot give a
definitive answer on when we'll be back up, nor can I even provide an
educated guess. Legally those servers are ours, but until a court of law
tells the ISP that they must give them back. they don't have to. So we're
stuck until there is some movement.
What this event has caused is a complete rethink of where Relay is and where
it's going. From this point forward, we will rely on no sponsors, or
companies to provide us with critical services. We will be on our own
contract negotiated by us directly. We will be in charge of our own destiny
and provide services at a level that we can afford.
We have also changed our pricing model with the publishers to allow for more
games. Details on the pricing structure will be announced upon return, and
this should allow us to provide you fine players with more games at a higher
level of support than before.
We thank all of those who have stuck with us through this difficult period
and rest assured that one way or another. Relay WILL be back. it's now only
a matter of when. We are doing our best to expedite the situation as best we
can.
Thank you all for your patience and your understanding.
Regards,
Jason Murray
President/CEO
Relay Game Network Inc.