Why I Left the Rampage Network
So yep, finally spelled it out.
The story goes like this: newb gets taken advantage of by a creepy, manipulative, self-serving person claiming to help them. Refuses to let them leave. Gets mad when they do. The not-so-newb is much better off now. The end.
IF YOU ARE BEING ASKED TO JOIN, REFUSE.
Oh wow! I can’t believe that, at once point, I was actually considering contacting them to join up. John Wigger’s mildly annoying experience with them was enough to convince me to not bother with them, but holy crap, that sucks.Â
So yes—if you’re starting out and thinking that Rampage Network might get you some exposure, don’t do it! It’s a messy, messy trap.
I know some people who were used by Rampage.  Don’t touch it. D:
I (Fes) had worked for Horatio at Rampage Network, trying to be a community director and such. Aside from not getting paid for several months, it didn’t seem like Horatio did…. anything…. ever. As though he just sat there, collecting ad money. It got to the point where I actually yelled at him a couple times to basically “shape the fuck up and start doing some things”.
Since Rampage Network hosted all of our podcasting files, it was a bit more difficult for me to simply leave. So I played very nice as I was gearing up to try and find some new hosting.
I mean, I did very much appreciate John/Horatio picking up The Webcomic Beacon and hosting over 16 GB of data by the end of the Webcast Beacon Network’s stay there. But I was having serious concerns for myself, and multiple other hosted creators, especially when he would do zero damage control when the servers would go down (for instance).
Finally I was able to move everything and get away when Hiveworks came in, and saved several former Rampage Network creators, including The Webcast Beacon Network. I am grateful to Hiveworks for now hosting us now.
I would never recommend anyone to work with John/Horatio of The Rampage Network. His business strategies are… suspect… if he even has any.
Signal Boost. There’s always SpiderForest. Which is where I am. And couldn’t be happier. I know too many people who had bad experiences with RN, including myself, to ever encourage anyone to be hosted there.
My experiences with RN were relatively mundane, though I am not surprised to hear about Aquapunk and Webcast Beacon’s experiences. Horatio/John seemed to have a certain amount of bad blood in the greater webcomics community, and with other collective owners, namely Frumph and Joey Manley.
To be honest, RN didn’t really do anything for me that I couldn’t have done on my own. I was never hosted by them, so the RN ad banner was just sort of hanging out on the footers of my website sucking up my pageviews. It was nice to be associated with a lot of other comics I admired on the collective page, and I’ve made some friendships over the years, but I can’t say it ever did much more for me than that.
