GameSpot

• 1. Introduction

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  GameSpot launched on the 1st of May, 1996, born out of a bet that the internet would change how people talked about video games forever. Three former IDG employees, Pete Deemer, Vince Broady, and Jon Epstein, left their jobs in January of that year to build something new: an online platform built entirely around gaming. Within two years, they had struck a partnership worth $20 million, staffed up to 45 employees, and put a television program on cable. By October 2008, the domain was drawing at least 60 million visitors a year. But behind those numbers sat a story with much darker moments. How did a small PC gaming site grow into one of the internet's most-visited destinations? And what did it cost along the way?

• 2. Building From Scratch

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  SpotMedia Communications, the company Deemer, Broady, and Epstein formed to run GameSpot, was only a few months old when the site went live. Its first focus was personal computer games: news, previews, and reviews aimed at the PC crowd. Console players were not forgotten for long. On the 1st of December, 1996, SpotMedia launched a companion site called VideoGameSpot, dedicated to console and arcade titles. That site eventually changed its name to VideoGames.com before being folded into the main GameSpot property entirely. The move from two separate sites into one reflected a broader ambition: to cover gaming whole, not in fragments. On the 6th of January, 1997, SpotMedia announced a partnership with Ziff Davis, and the $20 million deal brought content from publications including Computer Gaming World and Electronic Gaming Monthly into GameSpot's orbit. The infusion of capital that followed grew the staff to 45 people within a month. By the time ZDTV launched on the 11th of May, 1998, GameSpot already had a television program planned for cable, which premiered as GameSpot TV on the 4th of July. In February 1999, PC Magazine placed GameSpot on its list of the hundred best websites.

• 3. A Chain of Owners

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  On the 19th of July, 2000, CNET Networks announced it would acquire ZDNet for approximately $1.6 billion in stock, and GameSpot came along with the deal. That December, The New York Times compared GameSpot and a rival site, Gamecenter, to Time and Newsweek, calling them the twin pillars of games journalism online. The comparison proved double-edged. In February 2001, CNET cut Gamecenter entirely while sparing GameSpot, a sign of the site's relative standing but also a warning about the precariousness of the media business. In June 2008, CBS Corporation acquired CNET, and GameSpot passed to CBS Interactive. In October 2020, CNET was sold to Red Ventures. Two years after that, Fandom acquired GameSpot along with a cluster of other properties: Metacritic, TV Guide, GameFAQs, Giant Bomb, Cord Cutters News, and Comic Vine. The January 2023 round of layoffs that followed affected 40 to 50 employees, and further layoffs came in January 2024.

• 4. The Gerstmann Affair

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  Jeff Gerstmann, editorial director of GameSpot, was fired on the 28th of November, 2007. The review that precipitated his dismissal was a 6 out of 10 for Kane and Lynch: Dead Men, a title from Eidos Interactive, which was a major advertiser heavily buying space on GameSpot at the time. Both GameSpot and parent company CNET said publicly that the firing had nothing to do with the review. Gerstmann was bound by a non-disclosure agreement and could not say otherwise. In March 2012, that agreement was nullified. The timing had an additional twist: Giant Bomb, the site Gerstmann had founded after leaving GameSpot, was being bought by the same parent company that owned GameSpot, and the two offices moved into the same building. With that announcement came Gerstmann's public account of what had actually happened. He said Eidos had threatened to pull advertising revenue from GameSpot because of the poor score, and Jon Davison of GameSpot confirmed the account. The episode became one of the most-cited examples of advertiser pressure on games journalism, not because it was the only such incident, but because the details eventually became verifiable.

• 5. How Reviews Actually Work

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  GameSpot's 1-10 scoring system did not start out as a single number. Originally, games were assessed across separate categories, with individual scores for elements like graphics and audio. That approach was replaced in 2007 with a single unified score, still on the 1-10 scale but now allowing half-point increments. By 2013, half-points were dropped in favor of integers only, and each whole number was given a label: 10 means Masterpiece, 9 is Superb, 8 is Great, 7 is Good, 6 is Fair, 5 is Mediocre, 4 is Poor, 3 is Bad, 2 is Terrible, and 1 is Abysmal. The Kane and Lynch review that led to Gerstmann's dismissal landed at 6, the threshold the system now labels Fair. The fact that a score at the midpoint of a labeled scale could trigger an advertiser complaint illustrates how commercially loaded even modest critical assessments could become.

• 6. Staff Who Left Their Mark

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  Greg Kasavin served as executive editor and site director before leaving in 2007 to work as a producer at EA and then at 2K Games. As of 2021, he was at Supergiant Games, the studio behind several critically regarded independent titles, working as a writer and creative director. Danny O'Dwyer was a video presenter at GameSpot who in 2016 founded Noclip, a crowdfunded company that makes documentary films about video games. Chris Wanstrath worked as a web developer at GameSpot before leaving in 2008 to co-found GitHub, which grew into the world's largest hosting service for software code. In 2018, Microsoft bought GitHub for $7.5 billion. Gerstmann himself, after founding Giant Bomb, saw that site acquired by CBS Interactive on the 15th of March, 2012, the same deal that finally freed him to speak about his dismissal. The exits of Kasavin, O'Dwyer, and Wanstrath share a pattern: each person left GameSpot and built something that outlasted the platform they came from.

• 7. Beyond American Borders

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  GameSpot UK launched in October 1997 and ran until mid-2002, producing content calibrated for British readers that often diverged from what appeared on the American site. In 1999 it won the PPAi award for best website, given by the Periodical Publishers Association interactive, and was short-listed again in 2001. PC Gaming World functioned as a sister print magazine during this period, with some material appearing on both. After CNET absorbed ZDNet and the UK site folded into the main property, a relaunched GameSpot UK went back online on the 24th of April, 2006. GameSpot AU, the Australian edition, operated in the late 1990s with locally produced reviews before ceasing in 2003. When CNET launched its Australian portal that same year, GameSpot AU's content moved there. A full relaunch followed in mid-2006, bringing specialized local forums, Australian dollar pricing, Australian release dates, and Australia-specific news to readers in that market.