Rock Paper Shotgun

• 1. Introduction

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  Rock Paper Shotgun launched in 2007 as a British website dedicated entirely to PC games, at a time when PC gaming was widely dismissed as a dying platform. Four writers took a bet on the format: Kieron Gillen, Jim Rossignol, Alec Meer, and John Walker. What brought these four together, and what kind of publication did they build? Those questions run through everything that follows.

• 2. Four Founders, One Focus

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  Kieron Gillen, Jim Rossignol, Alec Meer, and John Walker founded Rock Paper Shotgun in 2007 with a clear remit: cover PC games and nothing else. That narrowness was a statement in itself, at a moment when most gaming outlets treated the PC as a secondary concern.

  Gillen was the first to step back. In 2010 he announced he would stop contributing day-to-day writing, shifting his attention to work with Marvel Comics. That same year, Rossignol launched his own game studio, Big Robot, stepping away from daily editorial duties as well. Meer and Walker remained longer, eventually leaving together in 2019. The founding team had largely dispersed within twelve years of the site's launch.

• 3. The Eurogamer Orbit

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  June 2010 marked the start of a formal advertising partnership between Rock Paper Shotgun and the Eurogamer Network. That relationship deepened quickly. The same year, Rock Paper Shotgun and Eurogamer jointly created Rezzed, a show dedicated to PC and indie games spun off from the existing Eurogamer Expo.

  By May 2017, the relationship had moved from partnership to ownership. Gamer Network, the network of sites led by Eurogamer, acquired Rock Paper Shotgun outright. A year after the acquisition, the site partnered again with EGX to launch a game jam, designed to spotlight a standout indie developer or team.

• 4. Corporate Hands Change

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  Gamer Network itself was acquired by ReedPOP in 2018, pulling Rock Paper Shotgun into the orbit of RELX Group as a subsidiary. The chain of ownership did not stop there. In May 2024, IGN Entertainment acquired Gamer Network, making Rock Paper Shotgun a subsidiary of Ziff Davis.

  Each transition placed the site inside a larger corporate structure, a pattern familiar to independent outlets across digital media.

• 5. Controversies and Critics

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  On the 5th of January 2011, Game Informer editor-in-chief Andrew Reiner issued legal threats against Rock Paper Shotgun and its readers after the site posted exclusive Game Informer images from the Tomb Raider reboot. Rock Paper Shotgun deleted the images the same day.

  One month later, a different dispute drew wider attention. Fox News ran coverage suggesting the game Bulletstorm posed a threat to children. Rock Paper Shotgun published a series of articles methodically challenging those claims. Reporters analysed the sources cited by Carole Lieberman, a named commentator in the Fox News coverage, and found that only one of eight sources she provided bore any connection to the subject being discussed. Fox News acknowledged the contact on the 20th of February 2011 through a follow-up article, maintaining that Bulletstorm still posed a risk to children. The exchange illustrated the site's willingness to take a specific, evidential approach to media criticism.

• 6. Recognition

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  Rock Paper Shotgun won the best Games blog accolade at the 2011 Games Media Awards. The recognition came in the same year the site had engaged in two high-profile public disputes, with Game Informer and with Fox News, suggesting the industry had noticed how the site operated. The 2011 Games Media Awards win remains the most specific piece of formal recognition recorded for the site in its early years.