As I said back in May 2024, I really suck at writing Editorials, lol. The plan back then was to write an Editorial at the start of each month. Well, here we are after three months with only one Editorial. Damn, I’m good at this.
Anyway, before we continue, here’s a Shoutout to all our Patreon members.
- Tally Lassiter
- Drifted
- Alex PAUL
- Count Duckula
- yep
- SonicX
- Netshark
- Joat42
- Luiz Tomas de Aquino
- Robenger
- Joe
- calculon559
If you want to support DSOGaming on Patreon, you can do so by following this link.
With this out of the way, let’s talk about some boring topics. The first one is our Comment Policy. As you know, each year we have a Poll for our policy. After three years, I believe it’s pointless to have another Poll. It has become clear that most of you want the “Unrestrained” Policy. And, given what has been happening with other sites, we’ll stick to it. So, we won’t have any other Polls because they are pointless.
Now as you may have seen, some words are censored. If you’ve been a regular reader, you know why we’ve been censoring them. If not, here is why. While you can talk about ANYTHING you want, some words will be censored due to Google’s ad policies. If you don’t like this, you have two options. These are: a) support us on Patreon so that we can be financially stable and remove the filter or b) visit another website that has even more restrictions than us.
The good news is that right now, DSOGaming is financially stable. We are not making millions but we are not running at a deficit. Okay okay, we are making billions thanks to all the Unreal Engine 5 stories and the thousands of sponsorships. Hooray. Expect even more now. More. MOOOOOOOOOOORE.
Joking aside, we’re doing OK, even though we buy almost all the games and the PC hardware components we use. The bad news is that we can’t expand yet. That is with paid writers for News/Reviews. In the past, we had freelancers but let’s be realistic here. In the long run, this can’t work. People need to pay their bills and although I was trying to contribute some money to their work (and I was buying whatever game they wanted to review), it just wasn’t sustainable for most of our freelancers. This is also why I’ve never demanded much from them, and why they didn’t have any kind of deadline for their articles. Some of them still haven’t written a review for the last game I bought them. And that’s fine.
Moreover, a lot has been happening in the background with Google’s algorithm. Due to the AI gaming websites that flood the Internet, and the fact that Google’s search engine has gotten worse, we got a noticeable traffic hit. The good news is that we can take that hit without any major issues. Again, if we had expanded… we’ve been talking now about layoffs which sucks because these would have been caused by external factors. I’ve always run DSOGaming with the assumption that things would go downhill the next day. This is why I’ve been extremely careful with each step. And, after twelve years, I can say that this has paid off.
To give an example. In January 2024, we got a BIG hit from Google Search. To put it simply, our traffic was halved. Not only that but our previous ad network stopped paying us. For the next three months, we did not receive any income and we only had expenses. This is what I called a “catastrophic combo”. As such, we took major steps to correct the course by switching to another ad network. We are now with Publisher Collective and things are better than before.
Obviously, as a reader, you never knew we were facing these difficulties. That’s because we never wrote about them. And instead of begging you for money (for the future of DSOG), I wanted to find a proper solution. That’s why I never really paid attention to our Patreon campaign. It’s cool if you support us. However, it became crystal clear when we launched it that it would not be making a lot of money (right now, from Patreon, we’re making… $26/month).
Since a lot of small websites are shutting down, and there have been a lot of layoffs in numerous places, I believe we’ve done the right thing. With the boom of AI, things may become even worse. So yes, we need to be careful.
But what about streaming games you may ask. Why I haven’t started streaming? Well, the reason is simple. DSOGaming takes all of my time, and I can’t be bothered streaming PC games. Right now, it makes no sense to invest in something like that. Once, we expand the team with a person that can handle all the PR and with more News writers, I might consider it. That, or I may let one of the new employees start streaming. As said, this isn’t right now my primary focus.
And that is all. Until the next Editorial (in 2025 as I suck at writing them, lol).
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
…DSOGaming is the best. Keep it up john.
Great to hear that at least the site is stable and moving in the right direction, Keep at it.
To 12 more years!
hear hear!
"The good news is that right now, DSOGaming is financially stable."
In a world that everyone else isnt and they rely on investment injections. I wont lie to you, i hate what the internet has become and this is because of google, youtube gave me a strike and told me i cant post for 24 hours for responding to some guy who lives in japan and says the japanesse dont like the new assasin creed game at all. I said "white piggu go home" which is a refference to some video that is on youtube by the way of some japanesse dude saying "white piggu go home" to foreigners. Apparently this means i cant post for 24 hours. Fck youtube, Then youtube recommended me a video of some guy i never heard of who has 450k subs on his main channel which was terminated for nudity, but he never posts anything like that, just animated funny skits from what i was able to tell and the guy is apparently in russia as well and then he said they rejected his appeal through manual review and this was in his second channel and the title was "this is it goodbye", seems youtube doesnt like him. Then youtube asked me how much i enjoyed the video, they got some nerve and then and i am not making this up, it recommended me a livestream titled "skin see through pants" and it had a sideways photo of a asian woman without pants and a bush and the livestreaming was about a forest video with some people walking around….wtf youtube?
Not only the censorship is rampant due to ai and you get idiotic banings but you got GARBAGE search results that have NOTHING to do with what you are looking for but they let stuff like what i described above to slip through the censorship and livestream it. All people i am subbed say their income has been reduced in half and then there are those who are shadowbanned and demonetized.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH i am as libertarian as it gets but its time to regulate youtube just to hurt them, just do damage to them until they stop being massive CNTS, see i cant even say the word or google will punish john harder. PAIN and fines is the only language these scum understand, time to crash silicon valley under its own weight and then support alternatives, i am sick and tired of this corrupt nepotistic system with selective enforcement, the internet sucks now and by extension so do the media and everything else. I find it hard to care about games considering who controls the industry and what woke trash they push to produce, just crash the whole industry and press the rest button. I am not even in the "i cant take it anymore" i am in the "i dont care and if something doesnt change soon, no one else will care either. These lunatics have ruined everything.
I cant get excited for everything, because everything is trash and looking at woke flops, everyone agrees. They whine about hate, but hate is good, it means someone cares, if there is no hate, then no one cares at all and this is how the industry is gonna die, not crash, but slowly die. First goes hollywood, then journalism, then streaming since its too expensive and then gaming. As for the internet, its already dead, most people online are bots.
You've spelled it out, man. The writing was sadly on the wall where it was all going with YT and Google. They are SO big but also so biased and the algorithms are basically monkeys throwing poo at walls.
And yes, as you said in different words, MOST AAA games and game devs have deals with the devil (DEI) due to financial requirements and how that side is being handled. The passion for making actual games FOR gamers is in smaller circles and indie teams now.
StarFAIL is the most recent example, in my opinion, of how far we've come. It was a lot of money spent to make the most generic and bland "game" to appeal to as many drones as possible…to keep investors happy.
I only hope we hit such a low point that the only way to go is up…. but I fear there's still a long ways for the bar to fall!
Oh well. I've learned to enjoy what I can and I have many other hobbies.
you said it as well, there was a video called "private equity has come for gaming" and it was a bunch of woke devs with weird mutated faces tatoos and pride flags saying they god laid off twice this year and how corporations are bad because they are too greedy and no innovation can happen because of those companies. But here is the thing, everything these woke mutants produce is EXACTLY THE SAME to a point i can tell if a game is woke by looking at it, they are infatuated children who like crayon colors so everything has to be filled with pretty bright colors, its like they are children or something.
Then someone in the comments said "wokeness doesnt ruin games capitalism does" lmao wokeness is literally coming from private equity firms through esg and you are paid to be woke by blackrock. All these morons whine about microtransactions when the last mortal kombat failed due to wokeness not microtransaction which the previous one was filled with, so which games failed? The free to play filled with microtransactions sexy asian games like genshin impact and first descendant or the woke trash like flintolock siege of dawn and that 2d wakanda game? Which games failed? The woke ones not the ones that are greedy with microtransactions and people need to also stop defending devs as if they are saints and its the "Greedy evil corporations" that are responsible for every bad choice. Go to steam and try buying hitman, you need a giant chart to see which version of the game you need to buy to get all the main content and it will cost you over 100 bucks, the whole thing is so confusing that i question how can anyone stay in that page more than 20 seconds and not check another game. They said that they can let you play the contracts mod in their previous game hitman absolution because square enix controls the servers. Well at least they learned not to lock mods and features behind server access in case this happens again in the future right? NOPE in the new hitman games progression and unlocks is locked behind server access, what dumbfcks they learned nothing. No "evil corporations" made them do these things, these morons did it themselves.
The future of gaming is bleak, the only good stuff comes from indie devs like the ones who make boomer shooters, i have literally become the "i just wanna grill" meme meaning everyone is like layoffs and woke games fail and will this new game run on my system and how many patches it needs to work and here i am playing old games and not caring about the dumpster fire that is the industry right now. Walk away from them, stop giving them any money, dont buy any AAA game for 2 year so they collapse.
i bet you get laid a lot.
thanks for your input my "dear god my life is h3ll" have you tried praying more, maybe he will listen to you and fix it for you.
Sore point? My apologies. I'd appreciate if you didn't bring our lord and savior into this though.
ok, let me put it this way, how is any of the problems above gonna be fixed is i banged your mum 3 times a day?
Well…you'd get laid?
yes with your mum and now the industry is fixed, ill keep fcking your mom until the problem i described above is f*ked. Stupid.
with your mum ew
She's 78 years old, which sounds like a best case scenario for you. But seriously, like I already mentioned, I didn't mean to be an a*shole. This is obviously a subject that you prefer not to talk about because it makes you angry and/or embarrassed. Be well my friend!
Welcome to the club.
I'm literally banned everywhere on the net except DSOG.
And just because I'm stating truths.
The West has become a leftist fascist abomination.
gab?
Hate evil.
Glad youre able to keep it up man, its a great place to read!
All I want to say is that never change and keep doing exactly what you are doing and DSOGaming will live forever.
Just FYI, DSOGaming is one of the few game news websites I visit, so keep up the good work, John! I appreciate the no censorship approach (considering what is outside of our control), and I appreciate reading actual opinions and not the watered-down, biased BS passing as game "journalism" on other certain websites.
Looking forward to many more years of great
nude mods articlescontent!i remember watching a video and a review of elite 2 was brought up and the reviewer said "next time throw the baby out with the bathwater instead of making another game because the whole idea is flawed not just the execution" and the guy in the video says "i miss when they actually reviewed games instead of describing how the gameplay mechanics work."
Everything nowdays is shilling.
You say small sites are closing down when one of the oldest and biggest just got killed off (Game Informer). So here is hoping you can continue doing what you do for long time into the future. Good luck!
You say small sites are closing down when one of the oldest and biggest just got killed off (Game Informer). So here is hoping you can continue doing what you do for long time into the future. Good luck!
1….. sorry, habit… 😀
1) You don't suck at writing them. Throw that stupid idea out of your mind for once.
2) It's always interesting to know some backstage stuff from the sites we read, and we keep coming here because we mostly enjoy the content or agree with the comments policy, so that means it all makes sense. And you could make Quarterly Editorials, it's less pressure, they won't be as forced or maybe void of content or meaning, and it's a decent pace to recap some events and commentary on the site and maybe the games industry.
3) I don't necessarily feel like you need to expand or stream. Streaming is about the charisma and fun, and if you aren't or don't have a relatable entertainer to put in front of the camera, it won't work. Simple as that. I'd probably keep this line of work aaand, it would be veeeery interesting and bring you peace of mind if you poll about "How would the readers want DSOG to expand", more of what, or what to add.
4) Yeah, i won't fuzz about the lack of polling on comments policy, i don't care enough about that, i care more about the articles and I've blocked all those that just spam trash and never contribute to a good discussion.
Yeah agree regarding the streaming part, evven big site like pCGamer and such didnt have many viewers visit their video , streaming or podcast channel. In fact, the only gaming channel that I love hearing the podcast , game streaming/video , and read the article only from Digital Foundry
Maybe you should start using ChatGPT?
one of the main ( if not the only ) reason that people visit this site is the uncensored ( well less censored ) comment section that is ironically liberating in a western influenced culture in which people wants to be offended by absolutely every single word they call slur to have a reason to make others silenced and canceled. and who do you think will win? a transgender, DEI employed, domesticated soyboy who will shout assault at every confrontation or a machete wielding refugee Muslim on the gutter of Aberdeen?
this has gone so far that i am now in support of the DUN DUN DUN "far right and the fascists so they can clean house of all of those leftists, after all we dont get free speech anyway. You cant make this up, Muslims murder little girls with machetes and the government whines about the "far right" which does not exist, its just labor voters who so far have found sucess in protests and riots and they think it will work this time, when in reality the government agreed with them and allowed them to do it, now that they dont agree with them, the will be arrested.
You will never expand and will never get actual sponsors/brand support because you promote toxic incels and their/your bigoted BS. The reason you're on the fringe of the standard internet is because you're garbage and your followers are garbage. But you know that, and thats why you're here and not employed somewhere else… then again we both know nowhere else will ever have you because of who and what you are. You think you're edgy and "free" speech, but like most of the Trumptards and AntiWoke-woesayers you're just a bunch of pathetic POS who only have this tiny sewer to vomit your garbage in. Which is fine, because its is hilarious to read the comments. And watch as this spec of irrelevant internet real estate festers and remains ignored by almost everyone.
The funniest thing is that so many of you don't see what a pathetic circle jerk this site is, but here you are tugging on each other so desperate for attention and validation. As I said. Hilarious.
Which DEI infected games/movies you enjoy the most?
every site is laying off people, every company is laying off people, wokeness is making a deal with the devl, arguing that the woke isnt the most toxic thing imaginable is laughable.
You call this site a circlejerk but we have seen it again time and time again, DISSAGREEMENTI S NOW ALLOWED on any other site, eg reddit assasin creed bans anyone who says yasuke was not a samurai, so these how you leftist scum win, by censorship authoritarianism and fascism and every time you take over something you engage in the same practises until what you have taken over is destroyed. Its like the atheism plus forums by the end of it it was moderators and admins arguing with each other and they banned all the rest, The investments you speak of come with wokenes blackrock and vanguard will give you money i you are woke and to quote the ceo larry fink "when it comes to race and gender you gotta force behaviors" Some moron made a video "private equity has come for gaming" and the argument is the problem here is greedy corporations and all the devs who were fired interviewed in the video were woke freaks. Well duh of course they were fired.
Then some woke scum bag with he/him anticapitlist vegan candaian, all these trash that responsible for this mess said that "wokeness doesnt ruin gaming capitalism is" and of course he disabled comments because thats exactly what you people are like, COWARDS who sell out to the highest bidder of black rock for money and then whine about capitalism and block anyone disagreeing with you, eg the guy who upvoted your post has me blocked, because you are all cowards.
No capitalism isnt ruining game nor do microtransactions, wokeness does, case and point which games failed the woke ones that receive esg money or the countless of successful free to play games like first descendant and genshin impact? The answer is clear, stellar blade was super successful despite the media whining about the sexualized main character and how outdated the depiction was. Which mortal kombat game failed? The one that was filled with microtransactions or the one that tone the attractiveness of the female characters down and went woke? Thtas right the last one.
Also this idea of saying "evil greedy corporations and saint devs" is laughable go buy hitman on steam right now, you need a very long chart to figure out which version of the game to buy to have all the content and you need to spend 100 bucks to achieve that. Io interactive left square enix to go independent only to do even worse business practices than them. They said that you cant play contracts in hitman absolution because square enix controls the servers and they dont have access to that, well, its a good thing that they learned from this and they wont lock progression behind some server side system again, oh wait next thing they did was to require server connection for the unlocks in their new hitman game. WOMP WOMP, how can anyone put the blame on "evil greedy corporations" and not stupid dumbfck greedy devs after this is beyond me, stop defending devs, often than not its not ea that is making these studios do dumb things, its the people in the studios themselves causing this mess, same with wokeness. Siege of dawn failed, the wakanda side scroller game also failed, banishers of new eden failed, sushi squad kill the justice league failed, forspoken failed, all woke games fail and corporations are not the issue.
Remember all of these companies listened to woke journalists and they hired them as "consultants" and now both these companies and the woke journos are getting layed off, they are the architects of their own destruction not us, they dug this hole themselves and they were funded by black rock with infinite amount of money nad wasted them all and now all these companies are going bankrupt, i cant wait for kotaku to close down hopefully polygon will follow but they are funded by microsoft, who also fired ton of people and closed studios, so even monkeys can fall of trees.
Much deserved. As for trump? The most promising thing of his campaign was project 2025 and he disavowed him, what a moron, trump is not enough we need someone who is actually far right and actually engages in hate speech 24/7 and names the jews and is willing to take down this system, i want to live in this extreme far right based world you woketards have created inside your head and looking at how things are going, we are getting closer to finding out the autrian painter was right every day. The fire rises and it will cleanse this degenerate world from woke losers like you.
How so very kind, caring, understanding, embracing, loving and inclusive of you. Classic pustulent leftist hypocrisy. Your kind is rotten.
Where you the guy that punched the woman at The Olympics?
This is not twitter, you absolute baguette.
Yet here you are, posting this drivel, get a grip my guy.
The irony here is palpable.
i only come here for the Unreal engine stories and then laugh at the whinging racist, bigotted babies in the comments. Keep it up!
What a sad life…
cry more, loser.
You keep crying while missing how ironic your paragraph is, f4ggot
and there it is, what a pathetic loser you are. I bet your dad wishes he pulled out. Be sure to ask him if he ever comes home.
Stop projecting kid.
Thank you for your effort to keep us informed! I hope the site will grow! I don't like hate speech so the “unrestrained” policy has some downsides. If you can maybe moderate or eliminate those guys more often, that would be great!
Let's hope pc gaming will improve so we can enjoy it more!
Keep up the good work!
the downsides is that people like you downvote my posts.
Upvotes do nothing for your reputation and downvotes are silly. No one checks your upvotes/downvotes before reading your comment. Downvotes don't even subtract from your total votes. I don't know why people even bother to downvote. No one cares what anyone thinks about what others think about any comments. Has downvotes ever contributed to how much people consider the worth of your comments to be? It's just some social media plague fluff that means nothing.
i wanna know who the tards are.
No.
You are the part of the problem here, not the solution. That's how it starts. Label disagreements as "hate speech", then demand their expression of that speech to be suppressed. Next thing you know another space has been successfully subverted and its original users alienated.
A textbook case of conquest's third law.
If you can't handle people saying things you disagree with then there are many other (leftist) hugboxes you can piss off to. Won't be missed.
You're missing my point. I'm all in for expressing opinions. Free speech is a must. Sensitive or difficult subjects.Whatever. My problem lies in expressing your opinion (not you, us in general) using insults and attacking the person instead of the idea.
Wrong choice John. Just ban the cess pit commenters. Those "people" have clearly failed in life and just want to vent their anger at arbitrary "others". Depending on the article 1/3 to 1/2 of the comments are blocked in my view. It really is that bad.
There's a certain demographic with disproportionately high crime rate in western countries. Should they be banned?
remind me a video by a black mra called "BAN NIG…" you know the rest, i think its still up on youtube.
Go somewhere else.
More Unreal coverage pls
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5627d2e5d4d890e1c87dacbd7ad9751a82f379f7e45813d182064ac5afface48.gif
lol "more UE5 posts" is the DSOG version of "more cowbell" 🤣
I said it in the past and I'll say it again. I appreciate that you have a backbone and that you're able to maintain direction despite the external factors that would otherwise force you to "ensh*tificate" what you do. As we witnessed over the years with others.
Been reading the site for years now. I even set up a RSS for my Feedly, so I never miss an article (yes I'm old and I read a lot).
I'll never run an ad-blocker here because I want to see the site grow.
I wonder why you never tried giving Google what it wants. Your site links get shared to 'prove' new games' bugs/stutters. Would be great if you capitalise on that while writing the rest of the content as you please.
When I started coming here about 10 years ago it was a fluke. I say that because you couldn't find Google search links to this site unless you typed something very specific and got lucky even then. In fact I did a test and Googled "PC gaming news" and there was not a single link in the first 20 pages. There were links to obscure PC game related sites and even links to sites that had long ago ceased to exist but nothing to here. You can easily find links from Google searches for a few years now so I understand John's desire to not make the Google god angry. It can ruin sites.
I like this site for gaming news and discussion because of the freedom of saying what I want. Unfortunately there are a couple of commenters that just aren't worth reading at all but that's the trade off for freedom of speech. I've never blocked anyone because to me that's childish (you can't block out annoying people in the real world so just accept that they are there) but I do make use of the scroll wheel. There are a few here that do have a good deal of knowledge and experience to add value to discussions.
So congrats DSOG to 12 years and hope there will be many more.
Someone in an old laptop site that was discontinued I can't remember the name, suggested this site years ago to me asking for alts to the koolaide selling sites. Ironically they said just ignore the comments lol
Voting does work sometimes after all.
I like this site a lot and for the past 10+ years it is still my daily place to visit.
All other sites are pure trash now with pointless filler or propaganda so it is essential for this place to be the way it is (but some upgrades for web code would be great).
I have all of my ad blockers and trash detectors disabled here so I hope I'm contributing somehow.
I also consider consistent commenting that's constructive to be contributing.
Thanks for the update
One of the few sites where people can comment openly without walking on eggshells, that alone is an oasis in this desert of censorship and political correctness that is killing not just gaming, but culture.
I'm glad to hear you've been able to weather the storm so far this year. Not everyone is so lucky. I follow the RSS feed and should always see your articles, but I'm also a leach who insists on using uBlock Origin (I worked in the anti-virus industry and don't consider it safe to turn off).
As for the comment moderation policy, while it's unfortunate to see the poll go, I prefer the comments being unmoderated so I guess I can't really complain.
It's not a surprise joogle has been messing w your traffic tbh Most of us here don't drink the koolaide like most vg sites are totally full of, likely also AI commenters to sell sell sell the latest garbage. So they don't like critical and contrary comments and such. If I lookup mods, especially nintendont emus and such I usually get this site though idk. Many of us come here only for the free commenting for the most part, robotic sites like ign etc are terrible paid for shills even more then this site can be and is at times, looking at UE5 etc.
Congratz to another year, the articles great but i think some of the filters on comment language could be updated
F*** Geewgle
Google should be brought before the world criminal court,keep fighting for free expression no matter how uncomfortable it may get