What Happened to Meristation, Spain's Gaming Giant?
Meristation went from Spain's leading video game site to a generic portal without a forum or search engine. What caused its decline? An analysis of its sale to Prisa.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Meristation: the corpse of a video game giant
In the 90s and early 2000s, Meristation was the go-to website for Spanish gamers. Today, visitors find a generic news site covering film, TV series and streamers, with video games as an afterthought. The forum, the heart of the community, disappeared. The search engine, a basic tool for finding reviews, was removed to cut costs. The decline is no accident: the sale to Prisa in the 2000s began a process of denaturalization that culminated in a zombie website, kept alive by ads but devoid of life.
The sale to Prisa: the beginning of the end
The origin of the decline lies in the acquisition by Grupo Prisa, which applied its management model to a website that until then had been sustained by its community. The forums, which generated moderation problems and barely any profit, were pogre closed. Freedom of expression was restricted: moderators imposed an editorial line more aligned with pogre, causing an exodus of many users to alternatives such as Vandal or 3DJuegos.
The competition that did adapt
While Meristation bled out, Vandal kept its focus on video games, with a functional design and an active forum. EOL and Mediavida also held out, though with very different styles: EOL more technical and dull, Mediavida more open. In contrast, 3DJuegos ended up killing off its own forum, trinc a general industry trend toward the Webedia model: generic content to attract clicks from Google, without community.
The mass grave: no search engine, no forum, no identity
The most Kafkaesque detail comes from the users themselves: the site removed its internal search engine. Anyone wanting to find a review of a game published on Meristation has to resort to Google. The current design is flat, generic and dull, copied from the Xataka format. The site survives thanks to reviews of obscure titles that no one else covers, but it lacks any differentiating element. It is a living dead.
The question that remains in the air is: can a video game website survive without a forum and without a search engine? The data gives a clear answer: Meristation no longer competes. It is an archive that generates residual income, a tomb with maintenance. For the gamer seeking community, the refuges are elsewhere.
Related discussions in the forum
In the 90s and early 2000s, Meristation was the go-to website for Spanish gamers. Today, visitors find a generic news site covering film, TV series and streamers, with video games as an afterthought. The forum, the heart of the community, disappeared. The search engine, a basic tool for finding reviews, was removed to cut costs. The decline is no accident: the sale to Prisa in the 2000s began a process of denaturalization that culminated in a zombie website, kept alive by ads but devoid of life.
The sale to Prisa: the beginning of the end
The origin of the decline lies in the acquisition by Grupo Prisa, which applied its management model to a website that until then had been sustained by its community. The forums, which generated moderation problems and barely any profit, were pogre closed. Freedom of expression was restricted: moderators imposed an editorial line more aligned with pogre, causing an exodus of many users to alternatives such as Vandal or 3DJuegos.
The competition that did adapt
While Meristation bled out, Vandal kept its focus on video games, with a functional design and an active forum. EOL and Mediavida also held out, though with very different styles: EOL more technical and dull, Mediavida more open. In contrast, 3DJuegos ended up killing off its own forum, trinc a general industry trend toward the Webedia model: generic content to attract clicks from Google, without community.
The mass grave: no search engine, no forum, no identity
The most Kafkaesque detail comes from the users themselves: the site removed its internal search engine. Anyone wanting to find a review of a game published on Meristation has to resort to Google. The current design is flat, generic and dull, copied from the Xataka format. The site survives thanks to reviews of obscure titles that no one else covers, but it lacks any differentiating element. It is a living dead.
The question that remains in the air is: can a video game website survive without a forum and without a search engine? The data gives a clear answer: Meristation no longer competes. It is an archive that generates residual income, a tomb with maintenance. For the gamer seeking community, the refuges are elsewhere.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (45 replies).
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