The Cutting Room Floor (TCRF), a long-standing wiki dedicated to archiving unused game content and unreleased builds, is currently offline due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The site, which has been a resource for gaming information since 2002, believes the attack was instigated by an individual who was banned for using AI tools, specifically Claude AI.
TCRF has implemented custom anti-AI artwork that appears when users attempt to access the site with large language models and AI tools. This stance has reportedly led to friction with certain AI proponents. According to a statement on TCRF's homepage, the recent outage appears to have been triggered by a user who was banned for using Claude AI, subsequently evading the ban, fabricating a story about their AI wiping their operating system, and then filing multiple abuse reports with the site's host.
This user, identified as Ron Stoner, also allegedly posted on X (formerly Twitter) about reporting TCRF to Dreamhost and examining the domain and its operators. TCRF's co-founder, Xkeeper, stated that while they have not directly accused Stoner of initiating the DDoS attack, his actions and online posts suggest a potential connection. Xkeeper noted Stoner's history of experimenting with poisoning LLMs to win competitions and using distributed attacks to create fake social media followers, referencing a blog post where Stoner described creating multiple fake online identities to disrupt systems.
Stoner, in response, inquired on X about the legal recourse for potential defamation regarding accusations of a DDoS attack. Xkeeper clarified that their comments were based on the suggestion that Stoner's post and subsequent actions seemed to have triggered the DDoS, not a direct accusation of responsibility for the attack itself.
Despite the ongoing outage, TCRF's temporary message indicates that the server is online and healthy, with traffic blocked only until the DDoS subsides. There is no estimated time for when the wiki will return to full operation. The situation highlights a growing tension between archiving communities and the use of AI tools in content creation and interaction.