GameTrailers Shutting Down

It's Been a Good 13 Years

By Bryan Smith on February 9, 2016 at 11:57am

GameTrailers has announced that they will be shutting down after 13 years of service.

After 13 years, GameTrailers is closing down today.

When GameTrailers was founded in 2002, internet video was a revolutionary concept. YouTube wouldn’t be founded for another three years; consumer live streaming was nine years away. Back then, online game journalism was still dominated by text articles and static imagery. The most prestigious coverage still happened in print. If you wanted to watch a show about video games, you had to watch it on a special TV station that had 10 shows.

GameTrailers helped change all that. Today, game journalism is dominated by video: trailers, live gameplay, Let’s Plays, and news shows. Now there are millions of hours of content available at any time on your PC, your game console, your TV, and your phone.
We’re proud we helped bring this world into being. That is the legacy of GameTrailers. We're grateful to all of our fans who helped make us successful. Thank you for your continued support over the years. It has been an adventure.

GameTrailers was founded in 2002 and eventually acquired by Defy Media, where they had began to lay off employees, which may explain (partially) why GameTrailers is shutting down. However, as they have stated, another part may be because of the competitive nature of game journalism.