There's nothing to say the Erik isn't dead. It is totally plausible that he could have passed away. Or more likely; he has abandoned this site exactly like he said he would. There's no knowing what could have happened to him. The domain name could have been paid far in advance.
There have been countless attempts to contact him over the past three years all which have failed. It has been two years since he has even been sighted as active on this site and its been 3 years since Erik proposed to migrate ownership of the site.
This site is a free-for-all meaning the first one to break in takes ownership. This site hasn't been updated in a long time, and this includes security updates to the software hosting the website.

I think it is a realistic assumption to say the end of the site is nearing soon:
The Domain Expires on: 13-may-2017
That's 6 months left from the date of this post.
Start saying your goodbyes.

Side note. I wonder where the money I donated went if the admin isn't checking his email.

Don't be alarmist. Erik is alive (hope so). He probably is just too busy with his life and have no time anymore to take care of this site.

I'm going to try calling the admin. Hopefully he won't be annoyed.

==Update==
I called the 'admin', which is 'marc bromm' apparently. Conversation lasted about 20 seconds. German guy picks up, but he also speaks English. He says he doesn't own bright-shadows.net.
Moral of the story. Unreliable WhoIs inforamtion.


Is it worth sending a letter to the address listed on the whois?

If the site's domain is going to expire, then we should choose one trusted member to buy the domain (help him with money if necessary), and he just have to setup the domain as it is today, pointing to the same ip address.

Some web hosting services provide both the domain name and server space as a single package. If that's the case, when the domain name expires the website will no longer be hosted.
If it's just a case of the domain name disappearing, you can still access the site by passing the hostname[bright-shadows.net] in the header of a http request to the IP address of the website. That would require the site to have a static IP address for ever.

The issue we should be focusing on is that the owner of the site is no longer maintaining it. It would put the future of the website in doubt as it could go down unannounced at any time. With no admininstrator there will be no one to put it back up and that would be the end of bright-shadows.
The site is already broken and may continue to break. No one new can sign-up, so the health of the community is rapidly declining.
Considering there circumstances, it is reasonable to say the website won't be up much longer.

The WhoIs information contains someother contact information. Maybe the guy I called is the owner but didn't really understand what I was saying. I felt like the guy I was calling was dismissing me. Maybe it was the owner, but he no longer wants to be a part of it.

The admin hasn't even accepted my PayPal donation from the 3rd of November. I'll have to cancle it.

You can count me in as one who will help as much as I can. Financial or otherwise I would hate to see this site closed down.

While the registration isn't working, its not over yet. This challenge was to prepare us for when this day came.

Good idea, let's just do it, haha.

I can't believe this site is actually still running after so long

If some of you guys still remember me I'm also there if some help is needed.
It was my really first challenges site and I learnt so many things there...
I just can't imagine TBS dying.