Shacknews

Shacknews is a website that hosts news, features, editorial content and forums relating to video games. It is owned by Gamerhub Content Network, which purchased the site in January 2014.[1]

Shacknews
Type of site
Gaming
OwnerGamerhub[1]
Created bySteve Gibson
Maarten Goldstein
URLwww.shacknews.com
CommercialYes
Launched1996 (1996)

History

Shacknews was founded in 1996 by Steve "Scary" Gibson at the age of 20. It was initially a website dedicated to following news about the then-upcoming id Software game, Quake. The original name of the website was "Quakeholio". Through the years, the website evolved to cover more topics, prompting a name change. After a discussion with friends about the general direction of the site and content, the name "Shugashack" was chosen. However, this name caused frequent spelling confusion and interpretation of the name as that of a pornographic website. The site was renamed again to "Shacknews".

FileShack, a site for game demos, patches, videos, and miscellaneous game-related assets for Shacknews users and others, was launched in August 2002.[2]

The front page of the site contains news articles that are be organized by category and topic. While for much of the site's history, little original research was involved in Shacknews content, in recent years, main news items have steered away from the "link-and-quote" news method. Currently, Shacknews relies heavily on internally researched news, in-house feature content, and industry event coverage.

Normal news posts and articles focus on and discuss a featured topic. Additionally, the site has twice-daily community posts. The titles of these posts are more one-off, and have included Evening Reading, First Post, werd, and Morning Discussion. The major function of these posts is to allow for a "free-for-all" discussion in the post's comment section. These posts are where the majority of the Shacknews community and site staff congregate to converse with one another.

On February 3, 2009, Shacknews and all related Shacknews destinations were purchased by GameFly.[3]

In January 2014, Shacknews was acquired by Gamerhub Content Network, and the sister site, FileShack, shut down.[1][4] Asif Khan, a financial analyst, had contributed to purchasing the site from Gamefly near the end of 2013, and he became the site's CEO.

Since 2014, David L. Craddock, one of the site's editors and a video game historian, has published several long reads on Shacknews. These have covered topics such as the development of various games, and are based on interviews with people involved in their development, publishing, and marketing. Some of these have been published as eBooks and physical books with editing assistance from Khan.[5]

References
  1. Asif Khan. "Letter to the Chatty".
  2. "Fileshack.com". Archived from the original on 19 October 2002.
  3. "GameFly Acquires Shacknews". Shacknews. February 3, 2009. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  4. Andrew Yoon (20 January 2014). "Goodbye, Fileshack". Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  5. "The Hard Truths About Being a Videogame Writer". Wired. January 25, 2020. Retrieved January 25, 2020.
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