As reported by Game|Life, Gametap’s editorial website and video content is getting axed less than a year after it was started.
 |
I have voiced worries about Gametap in the past, and this is another bad piece of news. The problem the service has is that it seems to be run by individuals who know what the hell they are doing. This brings a level of knowledge and communication with users that you would not expect from a branch of Time Warner. Of course, this makes Gametap stand out like a sore thumb, which is bad when it comes time to knock out anything unrelated to the bottom line.
In any case, losing the editorial section likely has nothing to do with the fate of the service itself, but it still makes me worry. I can’t tell if Gametap has been any sort of profitable venture, and this closing comes at a time when the service has had horrible weekly updates for most of the year, aside from Sam and Max episodes. Recently we learned of the return of Interplay games and the promise of new titles from Take Two, but that doesn’t instill much confidence in me. When you also factor in the loss of Uru Live and the lack of new Sam and Max until 2009, there doesn’t seem to be much going for Gametap for the rest of the year.
Of course, there is still a shit ton of games already there for me to play, but I worry about how long they’ll be there. In some ways, Gametap has been too good to be true, a secret party that the suits upstairs haven’t caught on to. With the recession worries and Time Warner’s general incompetence, the clock may be ticking.