GameFly acquires Shacknews

Game rental service GameFly has acquired venerable gaming site Shacknews for an undisclosed sum. This ends Shacknews’ 14 year run of independent operation.

Founder Steve Gibson will leave the site, according to Forbes’ Chris Morris. Gibson identified a desire to spend more time with family, rather than financial difficulties, as the primary motivator for the sale.

Speaking on the acquisition, GameFly co-founder Sean Spector said: “I think in the gaming category, there’s a large need for quality content. Shacknews fills that need, delivering great news and features and a vibrant community. We can leverage a lot of things we have internally, like our infrastructure and resources, and help expand it.”

In human-speak, GameFly is getting a built-in userbase to market its services to, in addition to a solid editorial team.

Some long-time members of the Shacknews community are up in arms about the sale, but may have missed the backdrop of the acquisition: Digital distribution.

Shacknews also owns FileShack, a strong competitor to IGN/Gamespy’s FilePlanet and Ziff’s FileFront in the file-serving space. And while GameFly deals with console games exclusively right now, a digital distribution service for PC games doesn’t seem out of the question.

FileShack’s infrastructure is already set up to deliver tremendous amounts of data, with the load distributed across multiple North American, European and even Asian servers. This seems like the logical progression for GameFly.

Gibson and Co. get a sack-full of money, while GameFly gets a huge boost in traffic to its network, a new userbase to market to and a file delivery network. In an ideal world, everyone wins.

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