Image: Capcom
If you’re familiar with the world of British video game journalism, then the name VideoGamer will be instantly recognisable.
Founded all the way back in 2004 by Adam McCann and Tom Orry, VideoGamer helped kickstart the careers of many popular writers and content creators, including Wesley Yin-Poole (IGN’s Director of News), Matt Lees, Chris Bratt (People Make Games), Simon Miller and Jim Trinca (VG247).
At one point, VideoGamer was one of the UK’s biggest games media outlets, but it was purchased by the Maltese company ClickOut Media in 2025, and since then, it has been slowly dying under the weight of dodgy gambling ads and AI-generated content.
I knew things had turned to shit at @videogamercom.bsky.social, but it seems they’re now using AI writers to pump out casino stuff and pretending they’re real people (none of these names bring up any related social posts online)
— Damien McFerran (@damienmcferran.bsky.social) 2025-12-09T13:23:30.241Z
The fact that most of VideoGamer’s staff weren’t real human beings was spotted a while back, but it all came to a head recently when the site’s Resident Evil Requiem review was removed from Metacritic due to the fact that it was quite obviously penned by AI.
VideoGamer has been de-indexed by Google. A legacy UK games media site killed by ClickOut. I worked for VG pre-acquisition – we brought back original interviews, rose the domain back up. It was acquired, filled with gambling ads, ravaged by AI, and then killed. pic.twitter.com/vuZKPcWrxc— Lewis White (@Lewis_D_White) March 12, 2026
It would seem that VideoGamer’s punishment might go a little beyond simply having its Metacritic status removed – former staffer Lewis White has noticed that the site has been de-indexed from Google and that traffic is “near zero.”
White adds that The Escapist and GamesHub, two other sites purchased by ClickOut, have also been subject to “a ‘Site Reputation Abuse’ manual action.”
Visiting VideoGamer reveals that many of the casino and gambling references have been removed, but it would seem it’s too late to save one of the oldest UK games media outlets from the scrapheap.
Damien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media’s sites from an editorial perspective. He’s also the editor of Time Extension, the network’s newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming’s past glories.