Dramafever Shuts Down Abruptly After 9 Years of Mainstreaming K-drama Watching

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• Nooooo! :((( An end of an era, indeed...

• WITH S2!!!!!! The greatest subbers ever. I remember Coolsmurf on Youtube really brought me down the variety rabbit hole with his videos of Xman way way way back

  • I miss WITH S2 so much. Their link is still on my favorite Bookmarks list.
    With Dramafever gone now means another source with good subtitles gone.

• I miss the old dramabeans website when it was a genuine discussion forum. Now it feels a bit commercialised and according to reviewers everything they watch is amazing and positive. Not being critically honest takes away from genuine reviewing so this is regrettable. In an effort to be civil and prevent fan wars, real reviewing and discussion is stunted. I stopped reading that site for a couple years now.
  I also remember mysoju 10 years ago, not sure if it was totally legal but it was the only site I knew back then! Plus no one knew what kdrama/kpop was then so it was a niche hobby to share with close friends. Now its all over the place, I saw BTS on a billbord on the outerskirts of london the other day! How times have changed.

  • Dramabeans is hopeless.
    If you read through the comments and now they set up some fan walls for the beanies, you can smell the hypocrisy from miles ahead. There's no honest discussion, everyone sounding so fake civilized. The only dramas they care to criticize are those dramas featuring Lee Jun Ki whereas worshipping of staple faves like Yoo Yeon Seok, Park Bo Gum, Son Ye Jin and Seo Hyun Jin (just naming a few) is OTT among the beanies.

    • Has is ever occurred to you that the people there might just be genuinely civilized and capable of mature dialogue without resorting to the ad hominem and petty drama that is so endemic to this particular community of fans? From what I noticed a lot of the active users there aren't exactly youngsters anymore so it makes sense for them to act in a more civilized manner. People there actually mind their own business, whereas here you have others criticizing them for being civil.

      I noticed some people here really love picking on DB, and while I agree it is not as great of a community as it used to be, it sure is still miles better than reading 125 comments about Lee Jong Seok's face or endless stupid fan wars. But whatever keep you entertained, I guess.

    • I totally agree with @Blue and @Adi! Dramabeans is still the best drama recap site. I enjoy reading the comments too. They make me laugh and at the same time thought provoking. I may not always agree but the diversity in views makes it interesting. At least they’re intelligent, mature, encouraging and they don’t criticize how a person looks. I also do not understand the Dramabeans bashing on this site. KP and DB are not competing against each other.

    • I am with @alexa on this one.Dramabeans was my go-to place for everything kdrama(recaps, news and commentary) but these days I just for casting news and even that I can just read soompi and get what I need to know so I rarely visit there.The quality of their drama recaps decreased.I liked it when Girlfriday and Javabeans were the main recappers.The comment section is meh these days.I will always prefer raw honesty and constructive criticism than empty praises just to avoid roughing some feathers.The worst part is they like to pretend or deceive themselves that they are neutral but the audience there clearly have their favourites but dont want to admit.

    • Echoing with @Alexa, the comment section in DB is hopeless. There is no end to their goo-goo-ga-ga from the few commentors who dominate that section. Oh yes, there are fan wars too, @Blue - maybe you have not read enough. For drama recaps, GB and JB were the best but they rarely write recaps now. Among the newer recappers, I like LollyPip. DB is no longer my go-to site for reading entertainment, as most articles have lost insight and sound too commercialized. This playground continues to be enjoyable despite those few people who keep changing usernames and interfere with the joy of commenting of others (you know who you are) :-)

    • @candycane I think I have read plenty in the 10 years I have silently followed the site. There are disagreements, of course, and once in a blue moon you'll have the occasional disruptive and hostile basher, but all in all it's a very peaceful and civilized community. I am not a fan of the fangirling that goes on in the feed and the recaps are nowhere near as good as before, but I still feel the DB hate on this site seems bitter and unwarranted. No one there actually calls out other sites and their users like it happens here and everyone minds their own business. If you feel the commenters are too vanilla and easily pleased, that's your opinion, but I don't think that makes them "hypocrites" or "hopeless". You can uphold your style of conversation here without bashing other people is all I am saying.

  • @sana , me too i remember mysoju, dramagaru,... 10 years ago i was one of the few who watched kdramas , people around me didn't know that Sk had an Entertainment industry !!! Used to Watch all the dramas ( only a few were available ) . Probably the reason why i'm still found of actors as Kim Sun Ah, Kim hee Sun, Yoon Eun hye, Moon Geun Young,Jang nara, Lee Dong Gun, Jae hee, Ji Sung, chae Rim, So ji sub, Park shin Hye, ... Sad.

  • I was following Javabeans (before it became dramabeans) when she was a wordpress site, starting with Dal Ja's spring and Goong S. Then I saw the changes .. and meanwhile I lost interest since Girlfriday and Javabeans are no longer actively recapping.

    How the time flies.

    • Those were good times. Sigh.

    • Does anyone know “why” jb and gf are gone? I feel like they just slowly disappeared off the site and there really wasn’t any sort of explanation.

    • I have not been reading Asian drama recap/new sites recently so have not been kept up-to-date.

      Whatever happened to Javabeans and Girlfriday?

  • Haai, i also saved by mysoju, eventhough it was ilegal. In the old days, k-ent isn't well known and now it's easy to find k-drama fan and fanwars among k-pop fans ?

  • Dramabeans and positive comments don’t go together. That’s a toxic website. The reason I don’t go there for few years now. Too many opinionated & too unreasonable hare comments. Those toxic comments are nowhere near as critical or intelligent...

    comments as such:
    “story has too many holes” comments just because they don’t understand... the writing is bad comment... geez..... writers have their own.. just because the story didn’t go according to what you want does not mean it’s bad writing...

    “direction was a mess” —- just because the flow of the drama didn’t go with what you want, it does not mean it was a mess.. it could be as viewer you are very shortsighted

    “bad remake or adaptation— because it didn’t go exactly with the original... hey since when art is about copy and paste...

    And other cringey “critical comments” -not-

    • Hmmmm....Toxic? Which site are you talking about? We have to be careful with our words.

      Let’s not be over critical. We’re just mourning the loss of Dramafever.

    • So basically, "too opinionated" = they dared to have opinions that you disagree with? Or criticise dramas that you liked? Because I can't tell otherwise why you keep using the word "opinionated" like it's a bad thing.

      Meanwhile the other commenter has issues with dramabeans because people are "fake civilised"..... ie just plain civilised with each other.

      It can't be both ways, but if db pisses both sides off equally then I think they are doing a good job. At least the commenters there aren't usually as nasty and toxic as the way some people on here can get.

    • #MistyEyes : Well can't expect every person aim to look at drama/movie for art and look at it critically. Most of the time it's for entertainment first, art later. So we will expecting alot of audiences will makes statement of what makes drama work for them before value that drama critically. So that's why just reading a review just as a reference and don't trust their view 100%.

  • I really don’t see why there is so much hate for Dramabeans. It’s still one of the top and best places for recaps and civil discussion. Very rarely is there a heated argument and drama.

    Is it so hard to believe that people can discuss dramas without name calling? There are many discussions and differing opinions and most people respect all the opinions. Seems to me you all are just bitter because there is a relatively safe and civilized place to have drama discussions.

    • Yeah it's not my style of discussion but you can tell the people on there really do love dramas. And the tone of recaps+comments there is generally civilised, even on recaps like Moon Lovers where it was very clear that the commenters were frustrated with various aspects of the drama, they were not attacking each other over that.

      I like the liveliness of Koala comments but I do think the tone of the main blog will always be reflected in its comments.

  • I also liked the old Dramabeans website with just the discussion forum. I don't go there anymore. Koala is my main source. Please Koala, don't chance your style!

• This is a truly heartfelt post by you koala. I started watching dramas in 2011 but I joined the community pretty later that is why I am unfamiliar with a lot of people you have listed. But once you are part of that community it is very difficult to let go. I hope you keep up your blog for the longest time.

• No wonder!!! Thank you for letting us know. I tried to watch but it kept shutting down. Thought my internet was fried. Oh well. It was great while it lasted.

• Dramabeans is great for recaps and after that I’m done. I’m following ‘The Guest’. I don’t read the comments because they’re long winded and sometimes go off tangent so yep. They’re very selective in what they choose to recap on too but I guess it’s their choice. However what gets me is that they diversified and had this online shop which I thought was very novel of them but it’s no longer in operation and Okay I’ll be honest I was tempted to buy something off there. I’m too embarrassed to write what it was.

• I was sort of "in at the creation" of Dramafever. I was a member of a drama forum that no longer exists and we were among the first to get the word and join Dramafever. I knew something was up yesterday when I saw a notice at the site that further episodes of "Ruyi" were "delayed." It's all very sad. Not panicking yet, relying on Viki, YouTube, and a site that shall be nameless lest it be taken down for rogue activity.

• This is really sad :(
  Another site to be missed.
  I do miss subs from WITHS2 and Gods of the East Subs (GOESS).
  I remember the time when we had to wait for a week or two for good quality subs.
  That was the time before dramafever or viki - when mysoju was the site all Kdrama fans would visit to watch subbed dramas.
  Dramabeans and Koalasplayground have always been my go to sites for recaps when subs were not available.
  I've seen a lot of changes with how the beanies (Dramabeans) do their recaps in the last years and I really miss recaps done by dramabeans and girlfriday.
  But I'm glad that Koalasplayground has remained the same over the years - I hope things around here don't change.
  PS.. I usually just lurk around the site - but I had to post this to say thank you! Thank you for fueling my Asian addiction all these years :)

  • Not really. Koalasplayground has changed too. There used to be drama recaps here but I guess it can’t compete with DB. I’m fine with KP as it is now. Just news.

  • No, koalasplayground is not the same. In the past, I can open many tabs to binge reading their articles, now it just forbidden :(

  • As a former part of GOESS, thank you for your comment :) those years of TVXQ and K-dramas were the best with the Hong Sisters zippy wittiness or even the sweeping sageuks.

• I have never forgiven them for forcibly removing the best (fan)subs ever made for Answer Me 1997 and replacing with their less-than-stellar subs. And in the early days, stealing from fan subs and tearing them down from the other sites.

  That said, it's the end of an era.

  • You should rewatch R1997 after the subs were edited and song lyrics added. I remember how incensed I was with DF during the R1997 days. And DF causing all those streaming sites to go. Have no good memories of the aggressive business tactics from its original owners.

    R1997 taught me a lot more swearing and I was so impressed that it had over 180 songs. I am still in love with how good the songs were and how appropriate to the scenes.

    I miss my knowing all the old online names- mysoju,aja aja, WITHs2, Mr X and hunting and finding episodes. Waiting for the torrents. I wondered what happened to all those uploaders and subbers.

    In terms of Kdrama years I haven't been on that long but boy was it an experience immersing myself in it. Life moves on. It is too dangerous to comment on your blog these days. People are so catty and bitchy and intolerant. There is no fun in joining a discussion. DB is not as fun but the comments are thoughtful and half the time well thought out. Don't understand why the bashing is going on.

    Life has moved on. I have learnt enough Korean to get by without subs if need to. So don't whine as much. And the more I learn the more I appreciate a good recap. And good subbing.

    Farewell to those days.

• I've stopped watching kdramas 2 years ago maybe? Just nothing interesting scriptwise, basic production and new uncharismatic actors. Hard for the business model when the only product you sell sucks... Quite sure they will be other sites going belly up.

  • Did you even read the whole post? DF shirting dkwn was not because of an issue of a decline in profit or interest that led to its shutdown. If it was, Netflix would have no interest in throwing more money than ever at kdramas.