Chasing Rupees   In June 2006 Lee, the second owner of Zelda Universe, sold his site for a cool $65,000, more money than most people make in a year. Many of us in the "Zelda Community" were left scratching our heads, wondering what this meant. The controversial deal raised questions about what it meant to have a Zelda site, even about the legality of such a deal and of our sites themselves. The majority of observers came to the conclusion that it was actually quite bad form to sell a fan site, but I'm here to say wait! It's okay to make money from this. And I'm not just talking about covering server costs, I mean full-on, multi-thousand pound sums as if this were a real job. Hold on there Nexus, you filthy, rupee-grabbing fiend! Are you seriously suggesting that you should be making money off people's copyrighted works? No. Of course I'm not, you silly, ruffle-haired freak. Well okay, I am, to an extent. In the same way sites like IGN and GameSpot cover games, so do we, only we have chosen a particular series to cover extensively. But Nexus, you rotten-faced, self-indulgent creep, you can't seriously be comparing your fan site, which incorporates official art in its design and provides unauthorised Zelda materials, to a Nintendo-approved media outlet, can you? No! You big ol' crazy-brains! For a start, we don't have a PR hand shoved up our arse! But other than that, yes, that's exactly the comparison I'm trying to make. On one hand, we can't go round like Dick Turpin, ordering Zelda fans to pay us for our services, because that'd be a little illegal. However, strip the official art from our design, replace it with some of the best fan art available (artist gets paid, of course), and it'd be possible to come out from the shadows and grow into a much bigger site. Or a network. Or a network of fan sites, all making money and growing and stuff. IGN had humble beginnings, too. Where's the romance? Why would you ever want to corporatise such a lovely little fan site? Reading Lee's advert for Zelda Universe was a little chilling - it used phrases like "Pages Indexed in Google: 227,000" and "Big Boards" and other stuff I'm amazed have ever been used to describe a fan site. The site's monthly income was $4,000, an insane sum of money, one big enough to live on. Big enough to what now? Zelda sites are ran in people's spare time thanks to work or school getting in the way. There's a lot of stuff I want to do with Zelda Elements that I just can't, because I simply don't have the time. For $4,000 a month, I've suddenly got way more time on my hands. And way more money too, some of which can be reinvested into the site to buy TV capture cards, rare Zelda games, random merchandise, audio equipment, and all of a sudden you have the most active, most fantastic Zelda treasure trove imaginable. I've just spent £50 that I don't have just for some Faces of Evil media. When you're a student, that's a ridiculous amount of money to spend on anything, never mind some bizarre CDi game that you don't have the hardware to even play. Yet. Of course, the Zelda Universe sell-out is slightly different. That money's going to support a family man who, quite reasonably, doesn't care for Zelda. That's okay, but that's the problem with growth. Where's the romance? There's none when sites become faceless money-machines, and terms involving Google Page Ranking say nothing of the community around a site. The kind of growth I'm talking about is the kind that is targeted towards improving the site, rather than the size of someone's bank account. There has to be a source for Zelda news that's as professional as a gaming site like IGN, one that actually covers the Zelda series in a fantastic amount of depth unlike the pretty-but-dim Zelda.com. Fan sites do a good job of this, but anyone who's ran one knows how easily it can take over your life. If it was your job, would that be a bad thing? TSA from The Hylia unfavourably covered the Universe sale and argued "Zelda fans profiting off The Legend of Zelda, beyond selling stuff on eBay that they bought in the first place, is the worst thing you can do in my book." While I reckon he thinks murder and stealing are pretty bad too, I disagree that profiting off the Legend of Zelda is that bad, if you could consider it bad at all. I think it's excellent, in fact, in the same way a gaming website covering games is excellent - they're only as good as they are because it's their job to be. While profitable fan sites are a legal grey area that we're staying the white side of, there's nothing morally wrong about creating a respectful tribute to anything and then wanting to make it better via commericalisation. While the Universe sale was cold, there's a load of content on that site that was made by someone, and had value. Its topic may be The Legend of Zelda, but that should be of no consequence.