{"id":474183,"date":"2026-03-13T22:21:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/474183\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T22:21:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:21:17","slug":"gaming-site-videogamer-removed-from-google-following-ai-pivot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/474183\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaming Site VideoGamer Removed From Google Following AI Pivot"},"content":{"rendered":"

VideoGamer is a games media site originally founded in 2004 by two university friends, Adam McCann and Tom Orry. In the volatile games media business, two decades are enough for something to be considered ‘legacy’ and, until recently, the VideoGamer brand was rallying around a string of original interviews and excellent reporting.<\/p>\n

Then, the site was acquired by ClickOut Media\u2014a Maltese company with ties to gambling and cryptocurrency\u2014and before long, many of the editors responsible for VideoGamer’s recent uptick were gone. Shortly after, the rest of the staff was ejected in a bold pivot towards a site completely occupied by AI-generated articles and fake editors.<\/p>\n

ClickOut Media owns several outlets, including The Escapist, VideoGamer, Esports News UK and Esports.net. A cursory glance at The Escapist’s decrepit YouTube channel<\/a> is illustrative of the company’s handling of its legacy brands.<\/p>\n

VideoGamer Is Functionally Dead<\/p>\n

\"Shooter<\/p>\n

VideoGamer then posted an AI-generated review of Resident Evil Requiem<\/a>, with the obvious problem being that a review posted at embargo time has no content for a limited language model to steal, so the resulting “review” was a nonsensical string of words that included all of the pre-release information the model could scrape, including pre-order bonuses.<\/p>\n

The humanoid husk responsible for the review was a fake editor named Brian Merrygold, an expert in “igaming”, which is a term used in a weak attempt to rehabilitate the image of online slot machines.<\/p>\n

The debacle was useful in that it prompted review aggregator Metacritic to release a statement where the company committed to removing any AI-generated reviews and blacklist outlets that submitted them.<\/p>\n

The editor profiles populating VideoGamer, which include ChatGPT-generated profile pictures and fake social media profiles, are a deliberate attempt to mislead Google, as the search engine prioritises articles written by real people who are experts in their respective subject.<\/p>\n

I remember making VideoGamer (Pro-G back then) sat in the tiniest bedroom in a university house share in Brighton. It was my entire life for a very long time. I hope people remember it for what it meant to people and not the abomination it is today.
\n\u2014 Tom O (@vgtomo.bsky.social)<\/a> 2026-02-26T20:28:56.768Z<\/a><\/p>\n

This is probably what caused Google to completely de-index VideoGamer, which no longer populates on the search engine when searched for. It’s a sad end for a brand that’s been around for so long (per Lewis White, formerly of VideoGamer<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Typing “Videogamer.com” still yields results on Google, though the removal of The Escapist and other ClickOut sites suggests this is almost certainly a manual order from Google.<\/p>\n

VideoGamer’s co-founder Tom Orry\u2014most recently Editorial Director at Eurogamer\u2014wrote, “I remember making VideoGamer (Pro-G back then) sat in the tiniest bedroom in a university house share in Brighton. It was my entire life for a very long time. I hope people remember it for what it meant to people and not the abomination it is today.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VideoGamer is a games media site originally founded in 2004 by two university friends, Adam McCann and Tom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-474183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}