NeoGAF is down after the site owner was accused of sexual harassment/assault.
 

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/...t-allegations/

It's unreal.

That was the last "big" traditional forum left and even before this it was already going down, it really is the death of message boards.

Gaf hadn't been any good since the early 2010's though, and it's rather poetic that this authoritarian forum go out being guilty of the very thing it blamed everyone else on being.

Good memories from the 00's and even early 2010s though but all forums die.

Wow, wild month for this kind of news.

It's not like it is a first accusation against administrator of said forum.
But it's a first one, where he and his staff were unable to get this **** under the rug.

Apparently, his moderators either were disgusted enough or were just tired of covering his ass and collectively bailed out.

One way or the other, it's one less influential hypocrite.

And it's not like that forum was good either - it was basically like any other gaming community, constant hatred and whining, just about everything. The only difference, that it had a heavy dosage of "keyboard-progressives" lunatics and extremely biased moderators.

The times are changing, people are now being outed over sexual harassment claims, I sense a huge change in policy at the workplace from now and ever.

Don't be surprise when you hear about more claims in some unsuspecting places.

People need to learn how not to sh*t where they eat.

NeoGAF was a trash fire, I've seen a lot of screencaps on social media of people being banned on that site just for a difference of opinion, on anything.

Or, you know. Not be sexual predators in the first place.

I'd been lurking neogaf since 2012 because IGN isn't very active anymore and I needed a place to go to read constant new gaming news. I had an account there but only lasted 3 weeks before I got permabanned. :lol:

But I still lurked there for 5 years from 2012-2017. The whole site literally imploded upon itself. I was there yesterday when it happened, the entire mod staff was de-modded and the owner of the site "evillore" was accused of sexually assaulting women both recently and in the past. The site was in chaos after that, and then they just shut it down.

The weird thing is it was one of the most active gaming forums on the internet. IGN is like a barren wasteland now, and unless you want to step into gamefaqs or /v/ (lol), there's not really any other places to discuss games much anymore.

The entire mod team actually "walked out", so to speak.

Yeah, they all left so as not to be associated with it. I can't see neogaf being brought back with a new owner either, the brand is toxic now. It's the death of the last big gaming forum, plus tons of developers and people in the industry posted there too.

IGN is all that's left now, besides as I said gamefaqs or smaller forum for individual franchises/games. Either that or you have to go to reddit, meh.

NeoGaf was a toxic brand for quite a while now, developers hated them as well as the majority of the gamer comminities. They just lived in their bubble thinking they were still the liked elite community because of their past but look at all the places like tumblr, gamefaqs, somethingawful etc telling refugees to gtfo and they aren't welcome. Developers didn't really post there anymore like the did back in the day since they knew all they did was whine and call them names.

They are just now facing the reality that everyone hated that place and its existence and since that hugbox of NeoGAF of banning anyone who didn't think like they did and erasing any evidence against the site you had all these users who thought the real world worked different than it did, and now that they see that the communities' owner was what they thought they were fighting against they have no place to go since their place is tainted and no other place wants them.

I actually think not being banned from there should be seen as a warning of the user you are :lol: Good memories from that place but just like most couldn't be more glad that its dead as well as its toxicity.

Where do you guys go for gaming news/forums now? All I have left is IGN which I've been at since 1997.

Gamefaqs forums are filled with too many young teenagers/trolls, it's only good for discussion of some individual games and the faqs themselves. You can't discuss anything legitimately on 4chan and the only alternatives now is reddit which I find awful to read or just social media.

I know there are several smaller gaming forums for individual franchises and stuff like that, but I can't think of any other big gaming boards anymore.

1997? Wasn't it called N64.com back then? How did IGN go from a N64 website to a full blown gaming website?

I get my gaming news from video game related threads and sections in different forums, including this one. usually when big news come a thread is made or someone shares a link with that info in a thread.

I don't bother reading official reviews of videogames anymore. i just ask people I trust who are into those games for their thoughts on them. I also don't buy or read gaming magazines anymore, unless my brother happens to buy the latest edition of Edge. That mag is always worth a read.

I stopped using IGN during the gamecube era, when they introduced the paid IGNinsider. I get most of my news from Twitter, I don't follow gaming sites but a few people who retweet the articles that I'd be interested in so my content is already curated.

Having a place to discuss? I just use the drome or venture to /v/ or /vr/ if I want more discussion, forums are a dying medium as we've gone through in two other threads, I wish there were as many places as 10 or 15 years ago but the world has moved on from message boards.

I personally go to the escapist, also sucks what happened to Neogaf I enjoyed the Toonami community over there

It's kinda mindblowing that you once had to purchase a monthly plaid subscription on IGN in order to be able to quote or post images on IGN forums.

IGNinsider still exists but I don't think many people subscribe to it anymore.

Man, that takes me back. I remember when IGN made almost all their boards subscription only, I think that only lasted for a year though. All the boards were made free again after everyone complained.

IGN was heavily active during the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era. All the gaming boards had tons of new threads and posted, and then The Vestibule and all the individual gaming boards like the Zelda board, Pokemon board, Resident Evil board, had tons of activity.

It was sometime around 2010, the late PS3/360 and Wii era, that IGN's activity started to decline. Over the last 7 years IGN has become a ghost town. There's still new threads every day of course, but it's a shadow of what it once was. I think it was the rise of social media in the late 2000's that killed off IGN.

What a shame. I have so much fond memories of a teenager on IGN and how active the boards were from 2000-2010 or so. I reached 100,000 posts on IGN way back in 2006. That was over 10 years ago now.

What sorta killed the IGN Boards is actually rather simple. I twas a big board update made around 2009 or so when they forced people to log in with their e-mails instead of their usernames or something. A lot of older users already didn't use the e-mails they had used to sing up to IGN originally and thus had to either make new accounts or decided to just say "screw it" and left the forums forever. Also, after that update was made, IGNinsider wasn't really a must have anymore in order to improve your experience with IGN. Anyone could have an icon now, quote other uses, post images, etc.

IGN admins had conducted a survey/poll before enacting this update, so that users could state their position... The "no" won by a landslide. They saw it was a bad idea from the start. yet IGN still did it. basically there really wasn't anything wrong with the boards, but yet IGN insisted on making changes... which ended up doing more harm to tis activity than good. So yeah, whenever I see someone here saying the Drome needs an update I'm like "nonononono". Why fix what isn't broken?

And ofc, social media blowing up around 2010 worldwide plus websites like Reddit being founded also didn't help matters either.

Back then every property had its own sub-forum there. Remember the TMNT one? It was fun discussing the newer 2k3 episodes there.

Next to The Vestibule, GTA and SmackDown had the most active boards iirc. I don't think GTA and SmackDown boards still exist there, though.

The Vestibule is still a quite active board but all I see there these days is everyone trying to act like a political expert.

I just feel bad for all of the victims involved.

My thoughts and condolences are with all of the victims. I wish for their safety, recovery, and well-being. No one deserves to go through that much pain and misery. :(

I also feel sorry for the people who genuinely liked NeoGAF. I imagine that most were unaware of the situation.

Still, they don't deserve to have their website go down.