Death of Dashhacks: How a Homebrew pioneer turned into an ad-site

Dashhacks was once the place-to-be for every Homebrew enthusiast and console hack fans.  What once was seen as one of the biggest Homebrew community, has now turned into a wasteland of ads and bots. But why did it turn out this way? Is it the death of the Sony PSP, or is it because the owners care more about ad-money […]

Dashhacks was once the place-to-be for every Homebrew enthusiast and console hack fans.  What once was seen as one of the biggest Homebrew community, has now turned into a wasteland of ads and bots. But why did it turn out this way? Is it the death of the Sony PSP, or is it because the owners care more about ad-money instead of their content? Most likely the latter.

The semi-dead Dashhacks is owned by Keebali, an Israeli company co-founded by Alan Weisleder & Aviv Eliezer in 2007, with Shai Beilis as Chairman. Their business model consists of “acquiring successful websites, in an effort to make them even bigger” according to their homepage. If “making bigger” means filling every empty spot with ads, and not caring about their staff leaving, then Dashhacks can be considered very big. There hasn’t been an article written for Dashhacks since July, and honestly… I don’t even think that the supervisor knows. I don’t even think that Keebali knows they own Dashhacks.

The staff tried to make something out of nothing since Dashhacks was basically nothing at that time. What might be even worse than the state of the website, was the communication. Our last effort to make use of the website was when we contacted Keebali with ideas. Not only did I get no response, which was expected. Tacit consent, right? Wrong! The whole login-in page fell apart, so nobody can log in.


I have been part of Dashhacks since 2012. With my role shifting from a writer, to the administrator, to project manager, to… I don’t even know myself anymore. It saddens me to see such a great community shattered. There was much more potential than just an ad-space. The lads at PSX-Place carry on the spirit of Dashhacks, so be sure to take a look at their website.

With the staff leaving and the fanbase leaving, is this what Keebali wanted? What did they want with Dashhacks? One of the staff members had to explain what a “Homebrew” was, so it certainly wasn’t their interests in console modding.

Conclusion: Dead website, no visitors = no ad-money