25 companies (and other things) Shacknews outlasted

Throughout 2021, Shacknews has been celebrating 25 years of bringing the internet the very best in gaming news, information, and entertainment. We'll hopefully continue to do so for many years to come. Of course, the best laid plans don't always pan out. Today, Shacknews looks back at the past 25 years and we marvel at some of the big-time websites, companies, and some other stuff that we have somehow managed to outlast.

Yahoo! Answers (December 2005 - May 2021)

The very concept of Yahoo! Answers feels like something that the internet took for granted. If you ever had a question on anything in the world, you could take that question to Yahoo! Answers. The Yahoo! community would then be free to provide answers and also vote on the best one. It was the home to provocative queries, off-the-wall humor, and memorable memes.

Out of Yahoo's many endeavors, Answers was one of the company's longest lasting pillars. Sadly, and this will be a theme throughout this feature, not everything can last forever. Yahoo! Answers officially shut down on May 4, closing the book on one of the most memorable eras of the internet.

Napster (The Original)(June 1999 - September 2002)

Take a stroll down memory lane into the turn of the century, where CDs were king. A new music format was emerging. It was called the MP3 and it was basically a digital version of a song that could be played on a user's PC or Mac. It could also be burned onto a CD to take on the go. But where did one find these MP3s?

For a hot second, the answer was Napster, a file-sharing service founded by Shawn Fanning. Napster allowed users to search thousands of servers and download copies of their favorite song for free. It was great for the average listener, not so much for artists and record companies. In fact, the Recording Industry Association of America, iconic heavy metal band Metallica, and other artists filed lawsuits. The end result led to Napster's file sharing service being shut down.

Napster changed the music game in many ways, helping usher in the adoption of the MP3. Even after the file sharing service was ended, listeners continued adopting the format, this time through more legal means. Unfortunately, this ruling also emboldened the RIAA, which would continue its assault on file sharing through the courts. The result is the modern DMCA, which remains the scourge of content creators to this day.

As for Napster itself, the company rebranded itself as a subscription service and was ultimately picked up by Best Buy.

Vine (January 2013 - January 2017)

In a growing social media landscape, Vine offered something refreshingly different. This service largely revolved around creating short six-second videos, which were meant to play on a loop. This led to some of the 2010's best memes and helped build the profile of some prominent social media content creators, including Jake and Logan Paul.

Things looked really good for creators Dom Hoffman, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll. They looked even better when Twitter came knocking on their doors and bought Vine for about $30 million USD. Twitter launched Vine and the service was an instant hit, becoming one of the most widely-shared apps on the market. The truest sign that Vine was doing something right was that its competitors (mainly Facebook) quickly began integrating their own takes on the idea.

Of course, in the end, Twitter is where many nice things go to die, so in 2017, Twitter unceremoniously pulled the plug on Vine, angering many of its users in the process. But, it's hard to keep a good idea down. Vine may be dead, but it lives on spiritually through another short form video app: TikTok. As for Vine's creators, Hoffman endeavored to get back on the horse, creating Byte, which has since been acquired by and integrated into Clash.

Friendster (March 2003 - June 2018)

Before there was Facebook and before anybody had ever heard of Mark Zuckerberg, social media began with another humble startup website.

No, not that one! That site's not even dead yet!

I'm talking about Friendster. This was a straightforward social media site, created by Jonathan Abrams in 2003. It quickly attracted over one million users and allowed them to keep a list of friends and socialize with them from a long distance. While it had a massive base, Friendster would largely stay in its lane and remain stagnant. This would lead to later startup competitors, namely MySpace and Facebook, overtaking Friendster in terms of features. Users would adopt the newer hotnesses and gradually abandon Friendster over time.

Acquisitions from companies like MOL Global would keep Friendster afloat for most of the 2010s, particularly in Asia, but one of the original social networking sites would eventually call it a day in 2018.

GameSpy (March 1996 - February 2013)

Online gaming services are sometimes taken for granted. In the old days, there used to be a middle man to help handle online gaming services, specifically hosting servers. Who stepped up to the plate to help? Well, like Shacknews itself, GameSpy's origins were wrapped in Quake.

Joe "QSpy" Powell, Tim Cook, and Jack "morbid" Matthews came together to create a service called QSpy, which was short for "QuakeSpy." Its purpose was to allow the listing and searching of Quake servers across the internet. When Hexen 2 released, QuakeSpy would be redubbed GameSpy3D until PlanetQuake owner Mark Surfas bought the license and called it GameSpy.

GameSpy would expand significantly, hosting multiplayer services for a slew of PC and console games. IGN would pick up GameSpy in 2007, where the latter would continue to lead the way in online multiplayer. However, the end was near around the turn of the decade. Glu Mobile would purchase GameSpy Industries from IGN Entertainment in 2012 and immediately get to work gutting the servers for older games while raising operating costs. The end would formally come in May 2014 when GameSpy announced that it would cease operations, which had the ripple effect of putting the nail in the coffin of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection services for the Nintendo Wii and DS. Meanwhile, GameSpy's media site was shut down by IGN and Ziff Davis around the same time, bringing the GameSpy brand to an end.

1Up.com (2003 - February 2013)

The internet was filled with great gaming news sites, some going beyond delivering the stories of the day. One such site was 1Up.com, which was created by Ziff Davis as a complement to Electronic Gaming Monthly. While 1Up.com was recognized for its news content, cover stories, and developer interviews, it also stood out for being one of the first sites to jump into the podcasting game.

Those who follow video game podcasts, as well as prominent podcast hosts, will often point to 1Up Yours as a game changer. It was a radio show that featured 1Up.com editors in a roundtable format, discussing the week's news and also sharing their own personal gaming experiences. This show had a heavy influence on podcasts like the Giant Bombcast, the Kinda Funny Gamescast, What's Good Games, and many more prominent shows of today, giving editors an opportunity to connect with their audiences on a more human level.

The 1Up Yours podcast formally ended in 2009 following 1up.com's acquisition by UGO. This would ultimately end up being Shacknews' gain, as host Garnett Lee would come over to our neck of the woods, where he would serve as Editorial Director and beloved host of Weekend Confirmed. As a website, 1up.com would continue until 2013, at which point Ziff Davis would pull the plug to focus exclusively on the IGN brand.

Mixer (January 2016 - July 2020)

Livestreaming came into prominence in the 2010s, largely led by Twitch. For all that it's done, Twitch has had its share of problems and hasn't been for everybody. This led to the rise of alternatives and one that streamers will remember fondly is Mixer. Backed by Microsoft, Mixer wanted to provide a livestreaming service while also bolstering the Xbox ecosystem. For a while, it worked. Sure, everybody thought of Twitch first, but a lot of users thought of Mixer right behind it. Prominent streamers like Ninja and Shroud even got massive exclusivity deals to join Mixer.

Unfortunately, Microsoft couldn't keep up with the demands needed to maintain Mixer. Worse, allegations of toxicity and racism within its community started to spring up. With so much working against it, Microsoft shut Mixer down and redirected its users to Facebook Gaming, which remains in place today.

Quibi (August 2018 - December 2020)

It's arguable whether Quibi was a good idea at the time of its inception. The concept was to create short-form programming, coming in at about 10 minutes. With users constantly on the go, they could tune in and watch a short show in the time that it takes to wait in line at the DMV, wait in line at a theme park, or kill some time during their lunch break. On the surface, it didn't sound like a particularly outstanding idea, but Quibi's creators were committed to seeing this through, drawing in investments from heavy hitters like Disney, NBC Universal, Sony, and more. There was a fair amount of buzz when Quibi first debuted at CES 2020. There was a chance this could have worked.

So then what happened? Well, a little thing called COVID-19 happened.

With the pandemic locking people down in their homes, closing down nearly every major business, restricting travel, and creating a new work-at-home culture, the need for bite-sized episodes suddenly wasn't there anymore. The Quibi user base bled out until it was mercy-killed later in 2020.

ESPN Zone (July 1998 - June 2018)

Theme restaurants are a risky venture, but surely, this concept could work, right? If someone walks into a restaurant or a bar, chances are, they'll want to check out the big game. Who houses bigger games than ESPN? This should have been (pardon the phrase) a lay-up.

The first ESPN Zone opened in Baltimore, MD on July 11, 1998 and soon expanded across the country. Those who attended E3 every June likely remember the massive ESPN Zone located across the street from Staples Center, near the ESPN West Coast headquarters where the 10PM PT edition of SportsCenter aired live every night. Unfortunately, the restaurants bled money to the point that they eventually had to be shut down. The L.A. Live location would close just one month after E3 2013, leaving the Disneyland location in Anaheim the last one standing. This location would shut down in 2018, leaving sports-hungry patrons to find other places to drink beer while catching some football.

Orkut (January 2004 - September 2014)

We talked about Friendster trying to get in on the ground floor of the social networking game. In 2004, Google (before becoming the Skynet-sized entity it is today) tried to jump in with Orkut, a service founded by Club Nexus creator Orkut Büyükkökten.

If you've never heard of Orkut, it's probably because it was much bigger overseas. India and Brazil, specifically, were more into Orkut, which combined friends lists with percentage scores. The service would gradually integrate design changes, video chat features, and more.

Orkut ultimately started to fall off in several ways. Security issues ran rampant with worms stealing users' banking information. Fake profiles popped up in large numbers. Plus, hate groups and illegal drug circles quickly rose across the service to the point that Google was subpoenaed by courts in both India and Brazil. While Orkut somehow survived these instances of lawlessness, Google ultimately cut bait on the service in an effort to start over with another social networking service. Surely, this Google+ idea would take off, right?

Right?

iGoogle (May 2005 - November 2013)

Look, we could probably fill about half this list with failed Google ideas. As poetic as it would have been to follow Orkut up with Google+, we wanted to focus on another major Google idea that wound up on the discard pile: iGoogle.

Long-time Google users will remember iGoogle as a customizable start page and personal web portal. Anybody could utilize the API to create plugins and widgets to create their own unique space that they could then show off to their friends. Those who didn't know how to use the API could use a series of gadgets provided by Google themselves, which could display photos, messages, and even YouTube videos.

iGoogle wouldn't make it far into the 2010s with Google announcing that it would shift its focus entirely to Google+. While Google+ would go on to die its own ignominious death a few years later, the need for iGoogle-style home pages never went away and alternatives, such as Protopage, naturally sprung up in order to help fill the void.

Klout (August 2008 - May 2018)

In the age of social media and analytics, Klout's purpose was to rate individual users and prove that "word of mouth was measurable." How much are you worth in the social media world? Klout was there to tell you with a score between 1 and 100. Users would receive their score after Klout analyzed their Twitter metrics, as well as metrics from other social sites like Flickr, Blogger, and Tumblr.

Klout managed to raise millions via multiple partnerships, as well as through its integration into Google+. (I'll stop kicking Google+ while it's down soon, I swear.) Unfortunately, it was hard to get a grasp on how Klout even worked, especially as its algorithm changed several times over its existence. Lithium Technologies would eventually shut down Klout in 2018, a little over four years after the company acquired it.

Pets.com (November 1998 - November 2000)

At first glance, Pets.com didn't seem like such a bad idea. Buying pet supplies over the internet is a good idea. Plus, they had a fun mascot! What was so bad about this?

Well, the problem was that it came during the dreaded dot-com bubble. While sales were high, the company was woefully mismanaged and couldn't survive the eventual dot-com bubble burst. That was mainly because Pets.com didn't really have much in terms of a business plan, especially when it came to the cost of shipping heavier items.

Pets.com died a spectacular death, but its core concept lives on today, thanks to sites like Chewy. After all, dogs and cats still gotta eat.

Virgin America (January 2004 - April 2018)

Having traveled a lot since getting this job over 11 years ago, I can say with conviction that finding a good airline is hard. At best, you can get some extra legroom as you drink a rum and Coke. At worst, it's Frontier Airlines, where you have a nightmare of an experience. One airline that sat at the head of the class was Virgin America.

With ample leg room, adjustable seating, in-flight entertainment, and a high level of comfort, it was always a pleasure to fly Virgin America. The worst thing anybody could say about it was that it had an ultra cheesy ("cringe," as the kids would call it today) pre-flight video, where people would break out into song about making sure to strap on your seat belt.

Alaska Airlines acquired Virgin America in 2016 and almost everybody's Spidey Sense went off all at once. Sure enough, Alaska would fully merge Virgin into the Alaska brand and remove everything that made Virgin America so great. Thanks for the memories, Virgin America. At least I won't have to hear that seat belt song again.

eToys.com (November 1997 - February 2009)

Like Pets.com, eToys didn't have a terrible central concept. Rather than get in throwdowns at the mall at Christmas time, just buy a toy online and have it at your door before December 25. Unlike Pets.com, eToys had something pretty big working against it.

While eToys wanted to establish an identity, the problem was that there was already an Etoy out there. Etoy was a European digital art group that was particularly loved in Swiss circles. The folks at eToys got in a legal war with Etoy over internet domain names and the fight got ugly. Anybody who went to Etoy saw graphic imagery that led to negative feedback for eToys. Eventually, there was a ceasefire declared. But, what was merely expensive performance art for Etoy proved to be a disaster for eToys, leaving it another victim in the dot-com bubble burst.

Eventually, the eToys.com domain would be picked up by Toys 'R Us, the beloved toy chain that remains alive and kicking to th-- OH, DEAR GOD, NO!

StumbleUpon (November 2001 - June 2018)

The internet, especially in the olden days when it was fresh and new, could be an overwhelming place. Where would one even begin? Why answer that question yourself when StumbleUpon could do it for you?

StumbleUpon's core concept was to take web surfers to random websites, based on recommendations, user interest, and paid advertisements. At the beginning, users could go directly to StumbleUpon and go wherever the winds take them. However, it would later be integrated into toolbars for Chrome, Firefox, and most other web browsers.

StumbleUpon made a pretty penny for original owners Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd when eBay purchased it for $75 million USD. After peaking at 25 million registered users back in 2012, StumbleUpon would remain active for a bulk of the new decade until it was shut down in 2018.

Club Penguin (October 2005 - March 2017)

The internet can be a particularly perilous place for children. If your young preteen is surfing the cesspool of Twitter, for example, you've probably failed as a parent. One safe place to leave kids was in the MMO world of Club Penguin, where users ran around a virtual world with their penguin avatars.

Club Penguin prided itself on being a family friendly and safe environment. Numerous safety features were integrated and moderators were present throughout the world. The Adobe Flash foundation made it relatively easy to run and maintain, which made it an attractive purchase for Disney, which picked it up for a whopping $350 million USD. Club Penguin became a massive brand in itself and one in which Disney could help promote some of its other properties.

Of course, decline is inevitable and Club Penguin was on the downswing by the latter half of the 2010s. The original Club Penguin would come to a close on January 31, 2017 with the servers being shut down in March. Disney would shift towards a new mobile app called Club Penguin Island, which ran on Unity. Unfortunately, it didn't see a fraction of the success of its predecessor and was shut down a year later.

Boss Key Productions (April 2014 - May 2018)

We like to joke around about a certain game, but honestly, we had hoped for the best for Cliff Bleszinski and his new endeavor, Boss Key Productions. CliffyB founded the studio alongside Arjan Brussee in 2014 and the team began work on a little game called LawBreakers.

And, yes, we joke about it, but LawBreakers wasn't actually terrible. Unfortunately, it never found a player base and was considered inferior to the more popular shooters on the market. It wouldn't be long before LawBreakers would go offline for good, but Boss Key wasn't done yet. There was still hope for the studio in the form of an early access battle royale shooter called Radical Heights.

Sadly, Radical Heights didn't take off either and was crushed by the more popular PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. That was enough for Boss Key, which shut down in May 2018. Radical Heights is currently no more, but the trademark rights are currently with Squanch Games, so we may not have heard the last of it.

As for CliffyB, he's currently enjoying retirement, though one never knows. He might someday get the itch and we may see his name emerge once more in video games. Who knows?

Clover Studio (July 2004 - March 2007)

Capcom is recognized today for its reliable franchise staples, whether they be Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, or Devil May Cry. (Sometimes Mega Man, if they're in a good mood.) In the mid 2000s, Capcom employed a studio that specialized in taking chances on new ideas. That was Clover Studio.

Clover Studio introduced some of Capcom's more outside-the-box titles, mostly recognized for God Hand, Okami, and Viewtiful Joe. All proved to be cult hits and critical darlings. They just weren't commercial hits and that's often the kiss of death in this cutthroat industry. Capcom's higher-ups soon ran out of patience and became insistent on safe and established ideas, which led to an impasse that ultimately killed off Clover.

While Capcom is still standing comfortably on the weight of its classic franchises, the spirit of Clover lives on. A number of former Clover staff members went on to create PlatinumGames, which remains a stalwart in gaming to this day. Another prominent Clover name, Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, found his way over to ZeniMax, where he would found Tango Gameworks, which would go on to put together The Evil Within and the upcoming Ghostwire: Tokyo.

Pandemic Studios (1998 - November 2009)

In 1998, Josh Resnick and Andrew Goldman exited Activision with aspirations of putting out exciting new ideas in gaming. Together, with an equity investment from their former employers, they founded Pandemic Studios. Pandemic is largely recognized for Dark Reign 2, Full Spectrum Warrior, the Destroy All Humans games, and the original Star Wars Battlefront and its sequel.

In 2005, Pandemic would partner up with BioWare and would later be acquired in a package deal by Electronic Arts. Pandemic would start work on The Saboteur, but the studio's fate already looked to be sealed. After shutting down operations in Brisbane, EA officially put an end to Pandemic and its developers were scattered across the gaming space.

The Saboteur eventually released in 2009. It ranged from "ok" to "great" depending on who you asked.

Visceral Games (1998 - October 2017)

This one hurts, because it feels like a relatively fresh wound. In 1998, EA put together a studio in Redwood Shores. After a humble start with Future Cop: LAPD, the team got to work on a spiritual sequel to System Shock. This endeavor would eventually be rebranded into a little game called Dead Space. It was a big hit and that led to EA Redwood Shores becoming Visceral Games.

While Visceral would assist on games like the Tiger Woods PGA series and Army of Two, Visceral's bread and butter was the Dead Space series, which it managed to develop into a full trilogy. While Dead Space was over, Visceral's future appeared to be bright, especially with a deal in place for the studio to put out an official Star Wars game.

Unfortunately, a combination of factors led to bad news. The first was Visceral being taken on a sideways trek through Battlefield country. The studio was assigned to a modern "cops and robbers" take on the franchise called Battlefield: Hardline. It was no good, received poorly by critics and Battlefield fans alike. Secondly, the Visceral Star Wars game was not coming along to EA's satisfaction. Specifically, EA wanted to take advantage of the multiplayer market, while Visceral wanted a single-player experience more akin to Dead Space. The two parties were at an impasse and EA ultimately shuttered Visceral Games for good in 2017 in a loss for the industry that still stings harshly today.

Lionhead Studios (July 1997 - April 2016)

In 1997, Peter Molyneux, Mark Webley, Tim Rance, and Steve Jackson all came together to branch off from Bullfrog Productions and create Lionhead Studios. After the studio got its feet wet with 2001's Black & White for PC and Mac, the team got to work on an action RPG called Fable.

It took a merger with Big Blue Box and Intrepid, but Lionhead finished up Fable in 2004, shipping it on the original Xbox. It was a massive hit, unlike anything Microsoft's console had shipped to that point. Despite Fable's success, though, Lionhead was in trouble. Fable's acclaim was offset by another project called The Movies, which was a financial disaster for the studio. With Lionhead on the ropes, publishers got into a bidding war, one that was won by Microsoft. This led to Fable blowing up into a franchise, one that would be exclusive to Xbox consoles.

By the turn of the decade, things went off the rails for Lionhead. Fable 3 was coming off disappointing sales numbers and the relationship with Lionhead and their owners at Microsoft was deteriorating. A combination of several factors, including Microsoft's attempted push of its new Kinect hardware, multiple resignations at Lionhead, and Molyneux exiting the company following a reported outburst led to the studio coming to a crossroads.

Lionhead attempted to soldier on with Fable Legends, but the project never wound up coming together. Microsoft eventually cut bait on both Fable Legends and Lionhead Studios, the latter of which was shut down in 2016.

Voodoo Extreme/VE3D (1997 - January 2012)

Shacknews had its humble beginnings 25 years ago, but there were a couple of sites that had a very similar spirit to ours. One of them was Voodoo Extreme, run by Billy "Wicked" Wilson. Like founder Steve Gibson, Wilson delivered gaming news in a more colloquial style, one more indicative of the fun hobby we all take part in. Wilson and Voodoo Extreme eventually went their separate ways and Wilson tragically passed away in 2005 at age 33.

Voodoo Extreme was eventually picked up by IGN and rebranded as VE3D, but it wouldn't last much longer. Just like GameSpy, Ziff Davis would shift focus to IGN, resulting in mass layoffs. VE3D would gradually fade away into the aether.

Joystiq (June 2004 - February 2015)

By the early 21st century, IGN had established itself as the primary mainstream gaming news outlet on the web. However, there were some up-and-coming names out there. One of them was Joystiq, which was originally put together as an extension of Engadget. Joystiq would gradually build a dedicated audience and bright days looked to be ahead when parent company Weblogs Inc. was purchased by America Online.

Joystiq's popularity grew largely because of its casual reporting style and its affable staff, which included future Shacknews Managing Editor Xav De Matos and future Editor-in-Chief, the late, great Andrew Yoon.

Joystiq's readership declined by the middle of the last decade, which led to AOL pulling the plug and folding any gaming coverage into Engadget. However, Joystiq's influence was felt widely across gaming media. Former Joystiq EIC Chris Grant would become one of the founders of Polygon, while the site would also provide a launching pad for the McElroy brothers and their careers. Meanwhile, Joystiq subsite Massively would continue to live on through a crowdfunded news site called Massively Overpowered.

Fileshack (August 2002 - January 2014)

We needed to end this list on something big and there are few entities more intertwined with the history of Shacknews than our old service, FileShack.

When Steve Gibson and Maarten Goldstein first introduced Quakeholio, part of the mission was to spread the good word of Quake in a variety of ways. Part of that was through hosting patches, demos, and mods. This eventually led to the formation of FileShack.

FileShack was a product of its time and one of the best places to find PC mods, add-ons, and the like. However, over the years, more elegant modding solutions began to emerge, the biggest one being Steam Workshop. Combine this with the strain that FileShack had on Shacknews and its servers, it was time to close the book on one of our site's greatest eras.

The late Andrew Yoon formally said goodbye to FileShack following the sale of Shacknews from GameFly. The result was Shacknews leaping into the future and what will hopefully be another 25 years of greatness.

A lot of things came and went between 1996 and today. Is there anything egregious that we missed? Join the conversation and let us know in the comments.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?