Fandom is bulking up the content it offers. The brand known for its fan wikis that cover just about any subject has picked up a number of big brands in the gaming world. In a deal worth about $50 million, Fandom has purchased an assortment of entertainment brands such as TV Guide, Metacritic, GameSpot, Giant Bomb, Comic Vine, GameFAQs, and Cord Cutters News. All of these companies were acquired from Red Ventures, who themselves had purchased those brands from ViacomCBS in 2020.

We’re thrilled to add these powerful, authoritative brands into the Fandom platform, which will expand our business capabilities and provide immersive content for our partners, advertisers and fans. The trusted insights, ratings and content they provide will make us a one-stop shop for fans across their entertainment and gaming journey.

This follows a string of purchases that Fandom has made recently, including ScreenJunkies and Fanatical, and Fandom currently boasts over 350 million unique visitors across all its sites, per month.

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[pleasehelpme2]

I hope they don't make too many changes to Gamefaqs. I love going on there and seeing all the old abandoned things. It's like looking into another world sometimes.

 

[Bagel Le Stinky]

uh oh

 

[CeeDee]

Considering the state of The Website Formerly Known As Wikia, that... isn't a good sign.

 

[KingVamp]

Did anyone even scrutinize this many buyouts?

 

[AlexMCS]

How low has GameFAQs fallen...
It's still my #1 visited forums/site though.

 

[Hells Malice]

Powerful and authoritative are not words I would use for any of those sites unless it was in conjunction with heavy sarcasm

 

[Foxi4]

$50 million is actually a… supremely low evaluation, they must’ve been horrifically mismanaged. Metacritic alone is considered an Internet landmark, as are GameFAQs, GameSpot and Giant Bomb (albeit to a somewhat older crowd). This is a steal for Fandom, provided they’re able to successfully monetise those platforms.

 

[SG854]

I use to visit gamefaqs when they gave fake information

 

[LainaGabranth]

Wow cool, I love a massive amount of information on gaming being controlled by a dogshit company. Free market works!

 

[Clapmastr]

Hopefully this goes better for Giant Bomb after Red Ventures acquisition caused half the staff to leave last year.

 

[ChiefReginod]

I left GameFAQs a few years ago and still miss it sometimes (I went out with a BMA post... no regrets, it was time to move on). I agree that it should remain as it is. The dedicated forums for every old game in existence are great.

On one hand, I actually like fandom. But on the other it's always sad when things consolidate to single websites like this. The Internet is shrinking.

 

[JonJaded]

Fandom has the world UI + UX of any site I've ever used. I can just barely accept it on PC with adblock but mobile is just a losing battle.

I really hope they don't add these auto play videos and ads that cover the screen to those other sites... PLEASE.

 

[Kazmar]

Fandom has the world UI + UX of any site I've ever used. I can just barely accept it on PC with adblock but mobile is just a losing battle.

I really hope they don't add these auto play videos and ads that cover the screen to those other sites... PLEASE.

My thoughts exactly. The amount of ads on the mobile version of the website is totally shit. They love their "enclose on all sides of the screen" ads. I'm sorta worried, but thankfully adblock does exist so I'll likely just avoid using those sites on mobile, not that I really enjoy or use my phone for browsing the internet anyway. I wonder if they'll create some kind of premium service that goes across all their sites. "Pay us $60 a year and you won't get ads on all these sites!" may be compelling to some folks.

 

[Valwinz]

so pretty much you cant trust any review from this sites

 

[linuxares]

I never knew reading up about anime characters could be so profitable... I joined the wrong site! (joke)

 

[ChaoticPumpkin]

Definitely time to start archiving gameFAQs, looks like there’s already some incomplete dumps on the internet archive

 

[Plazorn]

I am not going to trust news that comes from fandom, that is like using Wikipedia for everything.

 

[MarkDarkness]

Hopefully this goes better for Giant Bomb after Red Ventures acquisition caused half the staff to leave last year.

Giant Bomb died together with Ryan. Whatever is left of it is some strange distorted abstraction.

 

[xdarkx]

So to translate, these websites are going down in value meaning they are worthless and Red Ventures is trying to offload them while getting as much as they can.