Gamer Network

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Gamer Network began life on the 4th of September 1999, the same day a website called Eurogamer appeared on the internet. Two brothers, Rupert and Nick Loman, had built something from scratch in London. Nobody knew it yet, but that modest launch would grow into one of the most sprawling ecosystems in video game journalism. How does a family startup become the home of Rock Paper Shotgun, GamesIndustry.biz, and more than a dozen other brands? What happens when the company that shaped a generation of gaming writers gets bought, restructured, and bought again? And what does it mean for the people who worked there when the new owners arrive with a list of names?

• 2. Two Brothers, One Website

  ›

  Rupert and Nick Loman founded their company under the name Eurogamer Network in 1999. The two built the business together for five years before Nick made an unusual exit. In 2004 he left to pursue what the company described as a career in medicine and "competitive BBQ". That departure left Rupert as the sole driving force behind a company that was still, at that point, essentially a single website.

  Eurogamer itself had launched as a news destination for European gaming audiences. GamesIndustry.biz, a site covering the business side of the industry, had been folded into the Eurogamer brand back in 2002, giving the network a second editorial voice before most people had heard of either publication. That early move toward covering the trade as well as the hobby would define the company's identity for the next two decades.

• 3. Expansion and Rebranding

  ›

  In February 2011, Eurogamer Network made its first significant acquisition by purchasing American publishing house Hammersuit, which brought two websites, IndustryGamers.com and Modojo.com, into the fold. The deal marked the company's first formal step into the United States market.

  By the 1st of March 2013, the company announced it had outgrown its original name. Eurogamer Network became Gamer Network, a shift intended to signal international ambition rather than a single flagship brand. Eurogamer Events was renamed Gamer Events as part of the same rebrand, and Hammersuit took on the Gamer Network name as well. That October, Simon Maxwell was promoted from group publishing director to chief operating officer, a sign that the company was building out a formal leadership structure beyond its founding family.

• 4. A Network of Voices

  ›

  Rock Paper Shotgun, a website devoted to personal computer games, was launched in 2007 by Kieron Gillen, Alec Meer, John Walker, and Jim Rossignol. It partnered with Eurogamer Network in 2010 and was fully acquired in 2017, making it one of the most prominent additions to the Gamer Network portfolio.

  Outside Xbox arrived in 2012, founded by three editors: Andy Farrant, Mike Channell, and Jane Douglas. A companion channel, Outside Xtra, followed in 2016 with Ellen Rose and Luke Westaway, who had been a writer and presenter at Xbox On and a senior editor at CNET. VG247 had come earlier, formed in 2008 through a partnership between Eurogamer Network and Patrick Garratt.

  Dicebreaker, which covered board games and tabletop role-playing games, launched in August 2019. It organized the Tabletop Awards in 2022 and the Tabletop Creators Summit in 2023, giving the tabletop community a dedicated annual platform it had not previously had within the Gamer Network ecosystem.

• 5. ReedPop Takes Over

  ›

  On the 26th of February 2018, it was announced that ReedPop, the Reed Exhibitions division behind pop culture conventions including PAX, had acquired Gamer Network. Rupert Loman stayed on as chief executive officer, while Simon Maxwell became managing director and took on a vice-president role for ReedPop's UK operations.

  Loman left the company in February 2020. By September of that year, ReedPop had implemented layoffs across many of the Gamer Network sites. Two months later, in November 2020, the remaining staff at USgamer reported that ReedPop was closing the site before the end of the year. The USgamer team had already been cut from nine people to four following the September layoffs. After the site shut down, its content was migrated to VG247.

• 6. The IGN Sale and Its Fallout

  ›

  In November 2023, ReedPop announced it intended to sell Gamer Network's editorial brands, though the events business would not be part of the deal. IGN Entertainment was named as the buyer in May 2024, and layoffs at GamesIndustry.biz and Rock Paper Shotgun followed immediately.

  Dicebreaker cancelled its Tabletop Creators Summit at MCM Comic Con in the wake of the takeover. Chase Carter, writing for Rascal News, offered a stark assessment of what the sale meant for tabletop coverage. Carter, who had previously freelanced for Dicebreaker, noted that nothing had been published since the May 21st sale date and wrote that the outlet's "ultimate fate remains unknown at time of writing" in June 2024. Before that month was out, Dicebreaker's staff reported they had been made redundant. Matt Jarvis, the site's editor-in-chief, was among those who lost their jobs, and the site was closed without any public comment from new ownership.

  Further redundancies followed in February 2026, when Eurogamer's entire video team was laid off along with other editorial staff. That round came after the majority of VG247's staff had been moved to Eurogamer in summer 2025, leaving VG247 staffed by only two full-time writers.

• 7. What Remains

  ›

  Eurogamer's editor-in-chief is Tom Phillips, and the brand now licenses its name to six regional outlets that publish in their own languages. GamesIndustry.biz, led by editor-in-chief James Batchelor, continues to cover the trade side of the industry it has tracked since 2002. Rock Paper Shotgun, under editor-in-chief Katharine Castle, remains focused on personal computer gaming.

  Among the partnered properties, Video Games Chronicle launched in 2019 under a team led by Andy Robinson as a spiritual successor to the magazine Computer and Video Games. Road to VR, which covers virtual reality gaming, had been brought in as a partner in 2017 after Ben Lang launched it in 2011. The Gamer's Edition project, which produces merchandise and special editions for games, listed Papers, Please and a compilation of Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number among its first releases when it launched in 2013. That range of work, from trade journalism to tabletop coverage to collector's editions, shows how wide the original ambition stretched from a single London office in 1999.