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Supporters of #GamerGate like to describe it as a “consumer revolt” aimed at improving ethics in games journalism - detractors are rather less flattering.

The hashtag has been in use for six months months now, and we wanted to analyse what impact the campaign has had on the games websites singled out for attack.

#GamerGate, while being a decentralised campaign, has a couple of websites around which supporters organise, one of which is gitgud.net/gamergate. This maintains a boycott list, of sites which #GamerGate supporters are discouraged from visiting:

“This is a list of sites, companies, causes/events, and people that have colluded with Zoe Quinn in illegal and/or unethical ways and/or publicly defended associated corruption and/or censored its exposure and/or advanced associated illegal and/or unethical agendas. You are encouraged to boycott all of them.”

By the way, if you’re not really sure what #GamerGate is, or don’t really care, you’ll probably prefer this article about why vapers are a threat to the fabric of society instead.

Has #GamerGate made an impact on web traffic?

We looked at the traffic figures for the websites on the gitgud blocklist, to see how their traffic looks now, compared to back in August and September when #GamerGate first began organising.

We found that #GamerGate has NOT been able to damage the web traffic to MAJOR gaming or media sites.

Of the twenty sites on the #GmaerGate boycott with the highest Alexa ranking only two of them have seen their Alexa ranking slip in the last six months.

Top 20 sites in Alexa boycotted by #GamerGate

Alexa ranking - Sept 1st 2014 Alexa ranking - Feb 20th 2015 Change BuzzFeed 110 101 9 TechCrunch 299 359 -60 IGN 323 252 71 Gizmodo 374 315 59 VICE 520 273 247 The Verge 577 379 198 Wired 656 598 58 Cracked 767 696 71 GameSpot 856 854 2 The Daily Beast 947 937 10 Kotaku 1,076 608 468 Salon 1,121 1,093 28 Ars Technica 1,481 1,166 315 Uproxx 2,033 1,529 504 The New Yorker 2,248 1,435 813 PCGamer.com 2,528 1,914 614 Boing Boing 2,685 2,692 -7 Mic 2,743 1,853 890 Raw Story 2,813 2,480 333 Polygon 2,854 1,924 930

Of those seeing a dip, one of those is TechCrunch, and one is Boing Boing. Arguable neither of these are specifically game focussed, and it might be unwise to pin any rankings dip specifically on #GamerGate's actions.

However, we found that the #GamerGate campaign HAS been able to have a massive effect on smaller websites

Of the specifically gaming sites on #GamerGate’s boycott list GameSpot Asia, Gamasutra, Gameranx, Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine, Total Xbox, AusGamers, The Border House, Mangotron and Shacknews have all taken a significant hit in their Alexa rankings .

Gamasutra has plunged from being ranked 6,696 in the world on September 1st 2014, to being ranked 9,561 on 20th February - a drop of 2,865 places.

Gameranx has dropped 7,172 places in the same period.

Total Xbox has dropped over 30,000 places, and AusGamers over 40,000 places.

And GameSpot Asia has dropped so far that we needed to widen the column on our spreadsheet and get out our magnifying glass to read their 9,655,634 fall in the rankings.

#GamerGate's biggest losers among gaming sites

Alexa Rank - Sept 1st 2014 Alexa Rank - Feb 20th 2015 Change GameSpot Asia 14,390,650 24,046,284 -9,655,634 Mangotron 1,426,272 2,816,495 -1,390,223 Xbox 360: The official Xbox Magazine 604,709 1,525,182 -920,473 The Border House 894,943 1,038,533 -143,590 AusGamers 89,312 130,113 -40,801 Total Xbox 34,335 65,984 -31,649 Gameranx 17,123 24,295 -7,172 Gamasutra 6,696 9,561 -2,865 Shacknews 29,483 31,724 -2,241 GameSpot 856 854 2 IGN 323 252 71 Kotaku 1,076 608 468 PCGamer.com 2,528 1,914 614 Rock, Paper, Shotgun 6,684 5,985 699 VG247 6,883 5,982 901 Polygon 2,854 1,924 930 Giant Bomb 4,459 3,202 1,257 Destructoid 8,840 6,654 2,186 Siliconera 15,870 9,638 6,232

By contrast, major #GamerGate target sites like Kotaku (up 468 positions), Rock Paper Shotgun (up 699), Polygon (up 930) and Destructoid (up 2,186 places) have thrived.

Some sites have only recently been added to the blocklist - Siliconera and VG247 were sanctioned just a week ago - so you wouldn’t have expected to see any shift in usage based on #GamerGate activity - yet.

The pattern is repeated with media sites

The Gitgud blocklist also includes a large range of site described as “Geek / Pop / Contemporary Culture News / Review / Opinion Sites” which, while they are not specifically about games, may sometimes cover games, gaming culture, or have written about the #GamerGate controversy.

If you’ve not been following #GamerGate closely you may be surprised at how far their net of disapproval has been thrown.

The larger sites on the whole don’t seem to be affected, but smaller sites like Geek Party and New Media Rockstars do appear to have crashed and burned.

Alexa Rank - Sept 1st 2014 Alexa Rank - Feb 20th 2015 Change Geek Party 68,014 199,964 -131,950 New Media Rockstars 58,698 79,348 -20,650 xoJane 7,196 9,320 -2,124 New Statesman 16,342 18,108 -1,766 Boing Boing 2,685 2,692 -7 BuzzFeed 110 101 9 The Daily Beast 947 937 10 Salon 1,121 1,093 28 Wired 656 598 58 Cracked 767 696 71 ComicsAlliance 19,088 18,953 135 The Verge 577 379 198 VICE 520 273 247 Badass Digest 17,206 16,925 281 Raw Story 2,813 2,480 333 Uproxx 2,033 1,529 504 The New Yorker 2,248 1,435 813 Mic 2,743 1,853 890 The Daily Dot 3,162 1,935 1,227 The Mary Sue 9,775 8,184 1,591 Paste Magazine 7,316 5,084 2,232 The New Inquiry 150,788 79,620 71,168 Jacobin 113,704 36,702 77,002

Of course traffic isn’t everything

Part of #GamerGate’s modus operandi is to deter advertisers from spending money with sites on their block-list. An early victory claim for #GamerGate was a decision by Intel to pull advertising from Gamasutra - a move they subsequently apologised for.

But traffic isn’t necessarily a guide to how a site is performing financially - Gawker are on record as saying that becoming embroiled in #GamerGate has cost them a seven-figure sum in revenue.

However, it’s clear from these Alexa ranking figures that #GamerGate does not provide an existential traffic threat to larger publishers - but smaller publishers may well be deterred from crossing the #GamerGate campaigners.

Disclosure and methodology

Methodology: We downloaded the The #GamerGate Boycott List at 14:54pm on 23rd February 2015 and looked at three sections - “Video Game News/Review/Opinion Sites”, “IT News / Review / Opinion Sites” and “Geek / Pop / Contemporary Culture News / Review / Opinion Sites”

We used Alexa.com to measure how each of these sites had performed in the previous 6 month period, downloading CSV files for each available domain looking at both their Alexa ranking and Reach % as a measure. For reach % we averaged the reach for the earliest 7 days in the sample period available, and the most recent 7 days, to see whether a site’s internet reach had grown or declined.

Alexa rankings are, by the nature of the way the data is collected, fuzzy. However, all of the sites were subject to the same “fuzzy” measurement. This is Alexa’s explanation of how it measures traffic.

Journalist's disclosure: I’ve been playing video games since the seventies, and even wrote one for the ZX Spectrum, but nobody reviewed it. I believe pineapple on pizza is an abomination.