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Our dearest Gromph has passed away

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
With the heaviest of hearts, I regret to inform you all that NeoGAF’s long-time heroic system administrator, Gromph Gromph , has passed away suddenly.

Gromph, real name Raúl, built NeoGAF’s infrastructure and oversaw the technical aspects of our growth into a huge community over the course of more than a decade.

He performed the system migration from vBulletin to Xenforo in 2017-2018. Other sysadmins told me that it was physically impossible to be done in the time frame that Gromph did it, as our database is enormous, but he found a way to keep the downtime to an absolute minimum and ensure a smooth transition to our current platform with all 100+ million posts intact.

He cared about this place and was always there to ensure we were able to keep going. Gromph stuck around for the good times and the not-so-good times alike, without hesitation. I can't overstate how much of a technical challenge it was to keep the site operational on our old vB platform, which was never designed to scale to that level. But he got it done.

He was an excellent friend and a badass competitive billiards player. He even had a custom NeoGAF cue case made that he brought to tournaments.

The world is far worse off without him.

Rest in peace, Raúl.
 

nush

Gold Member
I only contacted him a couple of times when I was not sure if a technical issue I was having was a "Me" issue or a "GAF" issue. He was patient and helpful both times. RIP and thanks for keeping GAF running smoothly all these years.
 

Jeeves

Member
RIP. Didn't know him personally, but thankful for his hard work. He must've been talented to keep up with an enormous website like this.
 

TLZ

Banned
I don't know the guy, never seen him, but according to Evilore's post he's a huge asset, and looks like will be missed a lot.

My condolences.
 

Dark Rider

Member
This is really disheartening to hear, Gromph Gromph always seemed on the case whenever there was technical issues and he always came on top of the case. He will truly be missed. He also was pleasant to interact with.

Rest in peace, Raúl.
 
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ZoukGalaxy

Member
I'm so sorry for this loss 😢
My condolences.
"May Khenarthi fly him to the Sands Behind the Stars 💕"
 
Last edited:

Shmunter

Member
RIP Gromph.

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