Round 8
This round abruptly ended early in December 2003 (8th December?? - check) without warning when the leased servers were reposessed due to Fifth Season not raising enough money to pay for them. Credit card fraud in this and previous rounds was widely blamed as much of the money raised through account subscriptions was paid as chargeback fines for fraudulant transactions. Lithuanian and Romanian players had born the brunt of the blame for this.
During the round both Spinner and fudge left their roles, although fudge maintained the round when there were server problems requiring direct intervention.
Fudge looked at the code, but determined that it would not be worthwhile to rewrite the necessary parts in order to complete the 2 weeks remaining in the round. Seus made several emotional announcements on the portal and in #planetarion where he gave out as much information about what had happened as possible, however this was limited.
After an outcry from the community Zeus persueded Fifth Season to sell the Planetarion name and code. During December there was little information about the bidding process although several Planetarion names such as Starbucks placed bids. The winner was eventually Jolt who paid an undisclosed sum.
