Continued consolidation in the gaming press

[eastmen]

Fandom acquires GameSpot, Metacritic and Giant Bomb, other sites

Entertainment platform Fandom has acquired a number of gaming brands from Red Ventures, including GameSpot, Metacritic,…

www.gamesindustry.biz

This is a continued trend in the industry. Earlier this year Jeff Gertsmann who has been in the industry since the early 90s and was editor in chief of gamespot and then a founder of giant bomb left Gamespot and started his own streaming stuff.

 

[eastmen]

Here is a good video to sum it up. But basicly Tencent had massive lay offs at Fanbyte, G4TV fired a lot of people including their big names. Future publishing also let go staff


I guess the lack of response to the thread shows how unimportant these companies have begun. It's sad however as someone who grew up in the 80s/90s getting nintendo power or egm were the highlights of the month and then Next gen magazine with its beautiful pictures from Dreamcast games it feels like a loss

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Everything's being consolidated into a few very big fish. I guess until you find people who create a new successful thing and then decline a truckload of money because they value the thing more than wealth, this will always happen. Any new indie game press that spends years building up a following and successful income will sell out when time to retire, or just when the creator is ready to move on. Even if they leave it in the hands of someone who wants to remain independent, eventually it'll end up in the hands of someone who would rather have a truckload of cash. Then because the Megacorps have all the income, they can always afford bigger bags of cash to buy out the more stubborn indies.

There's not really a lot to discuss, beyond a massive Economics debate in the RPSC forum. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Or maybe if there is value in an independent gaming press and, if so, how to create a new site.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well, in the case of Games journalism (or any journalism) it's due to the crash in advertising revenue (advertisers paying less per view/click combined with the prevalence of adblockers) combined with most gamers (and most people in general) not wanting to pay a subscription fee to every media site.

It's a really difficult space to be profitable in.

Regards,
SB