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What a shit Christmas gift...
Yeah right… and I just purchased a year deal from them at the end of November, I hope they refund it.
"Discontinuing plans" I would expect to mean no more would be sold. Is it actually that they're cancelling active orders on 12/27?
I wish. They said the plans are unsustainable for them and that we should have our data saved before that date as it will be inaccessible. They said it all while trying to have a “cheerful” tone in the email, it’s a really bad way to handle a takeover like this. My images of the email won’t post, but here is a copy/paste of the email I received from them (bold font for the key parts, the alternative plans listed start at $12/mo):
We are excited to announce that Sparked Host has acquired Atomic Hosting. This acquisition was made to prevent further instability and ensure clients receive a better experience going forward.
Who We Are
Sparked Host is an established game and cloud hosting provider with over 8 years of experience. We manage thousands of clients and servers and are no strangers to the industry. We are well aware of the reputation and inconsistent service quality over the last few months, and we are excited to take the reins and begin rebuilding what's excellent in the Garry’s Mod space. Our intentions are simple: to provide stability and give Atomic a fighting chance to succeed again.
What This Means For You
Paid services have already been restored
Improved customer support
Improved hardware performance with our built-up infrastructure
Improved latency due to our global datacenter footprint
Service Migrations
The Chicago location will be removed on Dec 27, 2025
Paid VPS, Game Hosting, and Web Hosting will be migrated to new hardware, locations, and panels. The following locations will be available:
Salt Lake City
Dallas
Ashburn
Miami
Paris
Service Discontinuations
Unfortunately, some services are not sustainable for us and must be discontinued:
LowEndTalk discounted annual VPS plans will be shut down on Dec 27, 2025
We have replacement options available here: https://billing.atomicnetworks.co/store/budget-vps-hosting
Free Garry’s Mod servers will be shut down on Dec 27, 2025
Free Web Hosting servers will be shut down on Dec 27, 2025
Ensure you have backed up and saved your files before this date, as data will not be recoverable after this date.
Atomic Gaming
Atomic Gaming and AtomicRP will remain under Jacek’s ownership.
If you have questions or need assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.
We appreciate your understanding as we work to bring Atomic Hosting back to glory.
Sparked Host Management Team
They sent out that email today?
Given what @SparkedPaul said here: https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/4686073/#Comment_4686073 and https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/4686892/#Comment_4686892 this seems to be every bit as bad as the disaster going on with VeloxMedia.
If they're buying out the company, they need to honour the current contracts. If someone has an annual VPS, they should have a reasonable expectation of keeping it until their contract expires if the company is "rescued" and bought by another company.
If you wanted just the profitable contracts, you should have offered some kind of rescue deal via a partnership that let you transfer VPS from customers who opted in.
If you're buying the failing company because "We believe there's life in the brand, along with all the hardware" then just honour that commitment for the remaining terms of contracts. Or else do the decent thing and refund all those contracts that you're terminating early. That's the price of buying a ready-made portfolio of customers, some good for business, some bad.
Again, I'll repeat my conviction that I don't understand why other companies want to buy up failed hosting companies rather than just offering refugee deals - doing a buyout almost always harms their reputation.
Also, less than a week's notice of cancelling a service, especially over Christmas, and even more so after having previously communicated that you've rescued them is a bad look. It reflects terribly on Sparked's business practices, since it was them that made the decision.
Yesterday, Dec 24th, at 6:53pm CST.
Crazy.
Maybe they also want to write a handbook on how to kill your brand by acquiring another brand?
I also opened a ticket right after receiving that email asking if I’d be refunded and still have no answer on the ticket.
It really looks like it. How are they going to act like a $12/mo plan is comparable to a $27/yr one? It’s wild to me.
Yep, would be a fun way to keep scamming people otherwise. Cut a bunch of deals for X years, velox style, 'woops sorry we cant run this, sell it', and rinse, repeat.
I'd assume in the case of Atomic & Velox that its probably some 'purely earn out', where they get paid out a little bit each month, up to a cap. This is assuming the customers are still there and paying and renew.
In the case of Velox, that's 3 years of waiting.
Francisco
@Atomic_Networks @SparkedPaul @SparkedAustin any comment?
They sent this email out shortly after at 8:53pm as well:
We will start migrating all VPS hosting customers on Thursday (12/25/2025) at 8 PM EST. Our team will create a new account on the Sparked VirtFusion portalpanel, and you will receive an email to set up your account. Once you do so, you will be able to access your server once the move has been completed. We will send an email once everything is finished. Please note that IPs will change, so make sure to view that once you get into the panel.
New Panel Link: https://vf.sparkedhost.com/
Reminder: LET Special VPS’s will not be moved. All regular packages will be moved that are in Chicago.
If you have any questions, feel free to open a ticket.
Atomic Networks
What a crock of shit. Honest, you're probably better off though, these are another set of gameserver clowns that have no idea what they're doing.
They just replied to my ticket and they are total clowns:
Hello,
Refunds are not available under new ownership. You could chargeback if you'd like.
They can do what they want. Atleast time will tell. For now theres no visible failure.
Sparkedhost should be banned based on that snarky reply above alone. That’s no way to handle a customer.
I agree.
I do understand this isn't very pleasant and can look scummy, but from our viewpoint. This is what needs to happen.
Not every annual VPS is being removed, mainly the ones that are $6-12/year. We are reviewing every active service still. I will re-evaluate refund requests despite the renewal transactions going to a different LLC (we did not buy the LLC). I do apologize for the distasteful, and possibly snarky response @Frozecone (I did adjust my response and tell you that we can keep you)
We were originally going to just buy the hardware, get access to the datacenter, remove it, and that was going to be the end of Atomic. We instead have been put in a rock and a hard point, where we decided we want to try and save some of the clients and put in the work over Christmas week, before the datacenter forces us out, to save as many clients as possible. So we'll get the bad PR, but we actually chose to save the clients that are saveable. Though due to all of your backlash, we will adjust our response to the refund requests.
Also, @Francisco, you have me on Discord, we've done business together, but there are no earnouts here.
Alright?
Pure earn out would protect you, and the velox guys. Maybe atomic has enough monthly revenue to justify actual cash out, but maybe you simply took over and no cash traded.
Regardless, best of luck, sounds messy.
Francisco
'Tis the fuckin season I guess, hopefully this thread gets some traction as well. The reply plus the fact they're just flat ripping off however many people is pure shittery. Interesting difference between the 2 clusterfucks though, SparkedHost seemed to be an actual business unlike the LewEric/Velox nonsense.
It's a pure cash deal. Atomic has barely any revenue anymore.
Anyways, yes this deal is messy as Fran just put it, we do apologize for the distasteful response so far, and we are flexing now.
As commented, and we are an actual business, we have been making hard choices here during Christmas time with a short deadline from the datacenter. We are adjusting, and I do apologize for the snarky response on Christmas. We are trying our best and working hard to save as many clients as possible, but that'll go unnoticed.
Yeah, I'm not a client so hard to say but it's a dick move either way.
Update on the situation.
Anyone with the following products is eligible for a refund (please make a ticket):
CHI-B-KVM-1 | LET LABOR DAY
(Summer Sale 2024) CHI-B-KVM-1
(LET Black Friday 2023) CHI-B-KVM-1
CHI-B-KVM-0.5
(LET Black Friday 2023) CHI-B-KVM-1
(Summer Sale 2024) CHI-B-KVM-1
Anyone with the following will be transferred to new servers:
(LET Black Friday 2023) - LAX-P-KVM-1
(LET Black Friday 2023) - MIA-P-KVM-1
(Summer Sale 2024) CHI-P-KVM-1
(LET Black Friday 2023) - EYG-P-KVM-1
(LET Black Friday 2023) CHI-P-KVM-1
(LET Black Friday 2023 - FLASH SALE) CHI-P-KVM-1
Do not buy annual plans from companies that have been online for less than 10 years.
Late summer this year. 🌴☀️
Adding spin to what you're saying doesn't fix your shitty actions. You chose this path, this outcome is entirely your fault.
There are plenty of less shitty things you can do, including putting all the LET customers onto over crowded nodes to reduce the cost. But outright cancelling the plans with no refunds is a scam, and you deserve to be banned from here, especially as you are seemingly only targeting plans sold on LET.
It might not even be so terrible if you automatically gave automatic pro-rated refunds. That is the minimum restitution. But just cancelling and saying people can chargeback if they care to, you deserve to lose any goodwill you had at LET.