{"id":128586,"date":"2022-10-03T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/#article-138591"},"modified":"2022-10-03T18:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T18:30:00","slug":"fandom-has-acquired-gamespot-giant-bomb-gamefaqs-and-metacritic-in-55m-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2022\/10\/03\/fandom-has-acquired-gamespot-giant-bomb-gamefaqs-and-metacritic-in-55m-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Fandom Has Acquired GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, And Metacritic In $55m Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image: Fandom<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The latest big-company-acquires-other-big-company news for once doesn’t concern Embracer or Tencent \u2014 instead, it’s all about Fandom, a for-profit wiki hosting service covering news and information from a huge range of media, in an acquisition that seems to have surprised many.<\/p>\n

In a post on Monday, October 3rd, Fandom announced<\/a> that they had “acquired a portfolio of entertainment and gaming brands” for a reported $55 million, according to the Wall Street Journal<\/a> (paywall). The deal includes GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, and Metacritic from Red Ventures, the previous owners, who had themselves acquired the portfolio from ViacomCBS.<\/p>\n

Metacritic is an aggregation site for game review scores, which is notable for providing an average score for games \u2014 a fact often used by development studios as a benchmark for a game’s success.<\/p>\n

GameFAQs has been around since the ’90s, as perhaps one of the most memorable places to find ASCII walkthroughs and answers to obscure questions about puzzles and boss battles.<\/p>\n

GameSpot is notable for launching the careers of names like Greg Kasavin<\/a> \u2014 mostly known now as the writer and creative director at Supergiant Games \u2014 and Jeff Gerstmann, who was fired from GameSpot in 2007<\/a> over a negative review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men<\/a>, which had led to publishers threatening to withdraw their advertising from the site.<\/p>\n

Gerstmann would go on to found gaming website Giant Bomb in 2008 with fellow former GameSpot editor Ryan Davis. In 2012, Gerstmann was brought back into the fold when Giant Bomb was acquired by GameSpot parent company ViacomCBS as part of a combined gaming portfolio, but ViacomCBS later sold the site to Red Ventures.<\/p>\n