At the end of August, the traditional gaming portal 4Players announced its closure. As of October 31, 2021, the editorial support of the site was discontinued. The reason given by 4Players on its website:
This step was forced by economic measures that made future-proof operation of the online magazine in this form with this personnel expenditure and a changing marketing landscape impossible. At the same time, this is a consistent continuation of the company strategy, which has increasingly focused on the core business sectors since 2017.
Colleague Petra Fröhlich, the former editor-in-chief of PC Games and today’s GamesWirtschaft.de operator, had already summarized her thoughts on the end of 4Players:
more on the subject
What the end of 4Players means
On November 1, 2021, one day after the official cessation of editorial support, 4Players announced the continuation of the page on its website. However, under new management:
Accordingly, we are extremely pleased to be able to inform you that there are several interested parties for the continued operation of the 4Players.de portal in order to start the future of gaming with you. Even if we can already see the finish line, the process is not yet fully completed. That’s why we can’t say much more about it at the moment, but we will express ourselves fully as soon as possible and ask you to refrain from questions and speculations until then.
As you can see from the quote, we know very little about the continuation of the popular gaming website. It is not known who will continue to run 4Players and whether some well-known faces will push aside again. We would therefore like to ask you to comply with 4Players’ request and not to make any rumors or speculations about the continuation.
In the comments below the announcement, there are many mixed feelings. On the one hand, the loyal readers of the site are of course pleased that the traditional gaming website is being continued. On the other hand, they have a queasy feeling about the future of the site.
