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GameFAQs Acquired by CNET
Gamefaq addict writes "GameFAQs has apparently been sold to CNET. The operator says it will stay free for now, but premium services may be introduced later." Looks like a good deal all around. CNET gets the first site most people turn to when they need to get past level two of the dungeon, and GameFAQs gets an added boost. Makes me curious what premium features they have in mind, and how useful they'll be.
Nothing good has come from commercial game sites that I have seen. Witness fileplanet et. al., charging money for the convienience of downloading promotional material for a game. I am anxiously waiting to be proven wrong, however.
__________
Love conquers all... except CANCER
I remember when SegaSages got 'acquired' by IGN, and it turned into some lame, half-assed attempt at going 'legit' at making it a business... You know--keeping some of it free, some of it pay, tons of annoying ads (I say that, but I don't see them thanks to Mozilla--I assume they are there.), and the usual things going FUBAR during the 'change of ownership' for the first few months afterwards.
And now this is going to happen to GameFAQ's too? *Sarcastically* Great--another site that I'll have to ignore from now on, and rely on other fan-sites for the info I need.
I think I liked the internet much better when information was listed on websites for the use of everyone, not to sell to a large company to make a buck.
Just one of the many reasons I hate the internet more and more everyday.
There used to be tons of free content regarding every subject I could imagine. What happened?
Why is it when I do a search for anything, I have to include "free" only to be given lists of websites that say they are, only to outright lie.
I don't care about having to do a few extra searches, it just seems to me that the more and more content that is online, the harder it is for me to find legitimate information without someone wanting to take money from me.
Grr. GameFAQS will be the same way. They will charge just like IGN, and they will fade as well.
What happened to, For the love of the game?
http://use.perl.org
Of course not!
You will recieve free access for any FAQ that you created!
http://use.perl.org
Remember folks, while we all know that information wants to be free, "premium membership" deals are not necessarily a bad thing. Admit it, you never click the ads anyway, so you should be able to feel OK about directly supporting a service that's actually useful.
The announcement said:
You still own what you've submitted to GameFAQs.
If you've submitted FAQs, codes, reviews, or other content to GameFAQs over the years, it's no more CNET's than it ever was mine to own. You still have the right to remove anything you've submitted to the site, although naturally I'd be more than happy to try and talk you out of it. Your work was not sold to CNET; in fact, it was specifically excluded.
Concerning the cost:
GameFAQs will still be free. We're not cutting off any part of the site and making you pay for any of it. From the FAQs to the Message Boards, everything you see today for no charge on the site will be free tomorrow. While we may someday introduce new features that require payment, nothing you see today is going to be turned into a premium service.
I have to admit that I am a bit skeptical myself, but I have enjoyed Download.com and Computers.com free of charge for a couple of years now. I have benefited a lot from GamFAQs. I'm glad he'll get a paycheck AND a pager-free vacation from time to time.
- http://www.braveterry.com/
Their premium features will be the same as everyone elses. You will now have to pay for what you are used to getting for free. As soon as it is no longer available for free anywhere else it becomes special.
What I wonder about though is all the faqs. They aren't owned by gamefaqs. They are written by others for everyone else for free. If cnet tries to profit off the faqs written by random gamers, can't the gamers sue them for mad cash? This will surely be intersting. I hope the gamefaqs poll doesn't go away though, it is high quality.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
... everything you see today for no charge on the site will be free tomorrow.
Well, thats good. Now, I hope that we dont get flooded with pop ups or those in between comercials ala Ign.com Sure, Moz lays the smackdown on the pop ups, but the commercials in between pages... No thanks.
While we may someday introduce new features that require payment, nothing you see today is going to be turned into a premium service. I wonder what they could add as a premium service. I mean, you go there, post a message, see how to defeat Motherbrain in Metroid 1 and thats about it. I'm sure they'll think of something. Maybe pay to see the newest FAQs. Something like this:
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
s/Slashdot Story/FAQ for Zelda XII
What, me Tweet?
You all are paranoid nuts I swear. OK, quick, what other gaming site does CNET own? ...Thats right, GAMESPOT.
Gamespot is almost the opposite of IGN, where as IGN locks new content in a magic box of money, gamespot gives you the most up-to-date content for free, but charge you to visit the archives. Gamespot complete members ($20? $25? I forget how much I paid, *last year*) get other premium perks like professionally written FAQs.
Getting the idea now? Think: well produced gameguides by professional writers with a paid subscription. User written guides on gamefaqs have ranged from pure gold all the way down to horrid, illiterate drivel. You pick what you want to read.
Maybe they'll even have some sort of payback system for the authors...
I don't really mind double posts on
And here's why... all the content on gamefaqs was written by people sitting in front of their computer/PS2/XBox/Nintendo and writing down the information. It wasn't written by "journalists", but by fans. Fans like these despise ad-cluttered, overly-designed sites like GameSpot or IGN.
The result? The faq-writing "scene" will just migrate to a new site. All you people bitching, get off your duffs and get some hosting offering MySQL and CGI access. It's all plaintext, it's not hard to store. Recreate gamefaqs somewhere else. It's not going to be hard.
a pdf of the manual for console games. Renting games from blockbuster requires a trip to gamefaqs to figure out what all of the buttons do. It'd also be cool to get some old 8-bit manuals too.
I think the model that justifies charging for old stuff (rather than new stuff, or rather than not charging at all) comes down to this:
the new stuff is going to attract a somewhat predictable number of hits each week, and generate a fairly predictable amount of ad revenue. The old stuff, on the other hand, will only see occasional use and generate very little ad revenue. Additionally, the longer the site runs, the more old stuff there is to keep around, and the more hard drive space that takes up.
Information on older games has a tendency to be harder to come by, so a site could do fairly well by charging for access to well-written material for older games, assuming people want to play those games. Hell, try looking up the prices on one of the Final Fantasy strategy guides (don't remember if it's Anthology or Chronicles). It's out of print, so people are selling used copies for $30+ (actually makes me wish I had put my Nintendo Power Final Fantasy 1 strategy guide up for sale before FF Origins was released). The cost of the book could easily pay for a subscription to one of these sites (and in most cases the cost of one or two books could pay for the subscription anyway).
With new stuff, in any case, there will usually be some source of information available somewhere online for free. It just becomes a little harder to find it if the sites people are used to going to get sent into the model of charging for it.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
GameFAQs presents an interesting business dilemma. The proprietars don't own the resource people come for. GameFAQs consists of FAQs which are written by amatures and whose work the authors retain the copyright upon. As an author of several pieces on that site, GameFAQs has no more right to sell my work than any other publication.
So what is being sold? A well-respected name, first of all. The rights to control which directions the site takes. The ability to more tightly integrate with Gamespot.
Is GameFaqs going to change? I tend to doubt that. As a community-driven site, I would expect that major changes would cause a backlash, and a backlash on community sites means that you not only have less visitors, but you have less authors, which in turn reduces the visitors even further, and so on.
Why would C-Net, the company that bought news.com, gamespot.com, zdnet.com, and just about every other techie site out there, buy GameFAQs? Because GameFAQs is both a good property and is profitable. The owner actually makes a living with ad sales, enough of a living to go on vacation. It's profitable, it's shining, it's relied upon by many, many gamers... It could be used to drive traffic to Gamespot, it could serve as a gateway to Gamespot's paid professional FAQs, or it could just have been bought because it was shiny and well loved, and C|net loves to buy shiny things.
I'm not too worried here. Good decision, GameFAQs guy.
The ______ Agenda
http://s3.cgi.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.asp?b oard=4&topic=8340244
Looks like the sky may not be falling after all.
GameFaqs has a really great selection of FAQs but its problem is that it does not 'own' any of the FAQ submissions. GameRankings mainly owns a database filled with statistics and although not easily replicated there are alternatives.
I prefer GameTab to GameRankings (and to a lesser extent MetaCritic.com). GameTab is not owned by a large company like CNet and has a much nicer design and set of user features. It also uses quotes in its review summary pages and quotes help me decide much more easily than raw numbers whether or not a game will be to my liking. So for now on I'll be supporting GameTab (but I'm sure I'll go to GameFaqs because as of yet there is no nice alternative to that site.)
Jesus Christ you guys are blowing this way out of proportion. Think about this from a legal standpoint. If every single "FAQ" on that site was contributed with no credit to the author other than to share his "work" and to look "cool", there is absolutely no way that you'll ever be charged for that service. Do you think the current owner of that site, or CNet want thousands of legal threats? Stop worrying, it's nothing like IGN or GameSpot they hire people to write "professional" editorials and reviews for games, and get Koo "exclusive" media.
You know Ziff Davis? Well It's web company is zdnet. Remember them?
Cnet bought them a couple of years ago.
Ziff Davis also owns Computer Gaming World, Electronic Gaming Monthly , Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, GameNOW, and Xbox Nation.
And you know what websites Ziff Davis runs? www.gamers.com and www.gamespot.com , the latter of which has implemented a pay system recently for people who want all the content.
Now they buy this, doesn't make much sense, they're already on top, why do it?
as I can throw them. A couple of years ago, their builder.com had a free message board, The Builder Buzz, that was an excellent source of knowledge for all things related to web design/programming. All of the content was user created. Then, when CNet realized they were bleeding money, they decided to cut everybody off and charge for access to the Buzz. We could no longer access the posts that we had written, some of which we spent a great deal of time on.
Hopefully, this won't happen to gamefaqs, as it is another one of my favorite sites. I do think there is a glimmer of hope due to the fact that the licensing of the FAQs on gamefaqs is spelled out pretty plainly, but frankly, I would not put it past cnet to pull some legal trickery to get around it.
Speaking as a GameFAQs contributor (see my Metroid Prime FAQ under the name "Deflux"), I have to admit that this news had me worried at first. However, after speaking with several people and reading everything there was to read about this, my concerns have gone away.
CJayC, the guy who was running the site solo, addressed all of the FAQ contributors on a message board shortly after announcing the news on GameFAQs. Hereâ(TM)s a snippet:
First of all, let me re-iterate that none of your content has been sold. In the contracts for this deal, all third-party content (meaning everything you've submitted to the site) was specifically excluded. You have the same right to pull it off the site today that you did before, and you'll retain that right in perpetuity (unless you specifically give it away). I'm worried that some of you may be upset by all this and not want anything more to do with GameFAQs, and I'll respect your wishes completely, but I honestly hope that all of you will see how this is going to be better in the long run as well.
And just how is it going to be better? Well, aside from me having more time to add in contributions (just getting them up more quickly will be nice), there will be more opportunities for exposure for your work, and even opportunities for you to get more in return. Up until now, the tens of thousands of dollars I've given away each year in contributor rewards has basically come out of the profits of the site (i.e. my pocket). With a major company backing the site, that gets to continue and will hopefully expand to include even more contest prizes, plus the current contributor contests (FAQ Bounty, FOTM and ROTM) are sticking around (which reminds me, I'm already late for the May awards). I know that there are also companies that are interested in licensing guides for use on their own sites (for appropriate compensation, of course). Of course, we're not going to do anything with your work that you don't want done, so you'll still have full control over where your guide is posted. CNET fully understands that your work is yours to control, and since I'm not going anywhere, I'll still be the biggest advocate of contributor's rights I can be.
If he holds true to his word, then I don't think anyone will have to worry about the FAQs on the site becoming a premium service.