With the relaunch of my site this past May came my first reacquaintance with N4G since late 2012, and while I'm happy to see the site's become even more popular and the submissions pouring in from all corners of the galaxy, I have been alarmed and disappointed at the state of its community - specifically, the lions pit which is the approval system now.
I thought going into this post, some quick research on the problem would reveal it a recent one, but I've found many articles and blog posts published both in and out of the site expressing the same frustrations, some of them dating almost three years back, - about the time my activity here flatlined.
Having now gone through the approval process for three separate submissions, and in the midst presently with my piece on The Last Guardian published on my site yesterday, I am taken aback. You're essentially thrown to hungry lions with hundreds of others like you and made to beg your candidacy above theirs for a rope or ladder to benefactors in the stands who are either, it's hard to tell which, poor in number or in interest.
But the fact every N4G contributor with a minimum of three approved submissions is themselves authorized to grant approvals (the simple click of a virtual button), I have only two conclusions to choose from. Either a large majority of contributors can't manage to get even three articles through these gates, or they're among the crowd in the stands when they don't find themselves in the pit - somehow a much worse scenario.
I'd be shocked to learn it was these people, the ones whose presence on the site and resulting traffic to their own depends on peer approval, so for lack of empathy, so selfish, as to not care to return the kindness. Yet this appears to be exactly the case.
I haven't been active (again) for long, and it could be the problem lies with the system itself, or with the way N4G governs the system which leads directly to the behaviour of its users, but the result tastes toxic. Personally, I have made it a point to approve all submissions which are correctly tagged, which come from legitimate sources and which follow N4G's submission guidelines, and I can tell you: it's not a lot of work. It doesn't interrupt your day to offer a few approvals here or there when you have a moment, and by doing so we're helping ourselves as much as everyone else, and no less.
Even if you do consider yourself selfish, this poses no threat at all to your #1. So honey, be selfish all you want, but charitably.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
I don't bother submitting anything because I know it won't get approved nothing does unless you have more contributor accounts and you approve your own submissions or if you know a mod or other contributors who can help you get your article approved or else it will never get approved
All the Hava sites should be connected. I can submit on 11x2 but not on N4G. I have three bubbles (know they are phasing that out) on FilmWatch but four on Techspy. One profile to rule them all please.
My stuff usually gets approved rather quickly now, but don't expect much heat unless it's trending that same day or is just a console wars piece.
I think your argument is very disjointed and I'm trying to figure out what you're honestly saying. So, I'm going to ask some blunt questions here and hope you can answer them:
***I have been alarmed and disappointed at the state of its community - specifically, the lions pit which is the approval system now. ***
What about it specifically?
***I've found many articles and blog posts published both in and out of the site expressing the same frustrations***
What are these frustrations? You haven't mentioned any yet other than referring it to a lions pit. What makes it a lions pit?
***You're essentially thrown to hungry lions with hundreds of others like you and made to beg your candidacy above theirs for a rope or ladder to benefactors in the stands who are either, it's hard to tell which, poor in number or in interest. ***
Okay, how is that different than any other aggregate site that is community driven? That's what happens. Are you asking us to not enable community driven content? Are you asking for us to favor your content over others for some reason? Without it being a community driven process, how would we not create what you are mentioning?
***I'd be shocked to learn it was these people, the ones whose presence on the site and resulting traffic to their own depends on peer approval, so for lack of empathy, so selfish, as to not care to return the kindness.***
Are you saying that HAVA Media, the owners of N4G, should program a way that forces them to limit their choice in how they use their approvals so as to force them to promote competing sites over their own? We already require them to approve submissions other than their own and we do look for sites that try to 'push' content through with multiple accounts associated with a single site. But should we go further, and into much more complex checks and balances, to ensure they are approving... what? Something more along your line of thinking? Something more along that other guy's line of thinking?
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In the end, if you expect to submit something and it to just take off and be accepted by everyone, then you are in the wrong place. News itself is a dog eat dog world. Aggregate news is no different.
If you thought to get into the business of developing gaming news and thinking that after some submissions you would be doing well, then you were wrong in that thinking. This business takes time, patience, wisdom, and a desire to learn what your audience wants and how best to give it to them.
N4G does not just bow to the whim of what someone expects out of N4G. It has its rules (duplicates, sourcing, etc.) and it has its community to approve things. Then it has the moderators to make sure things aren't being abused or that people aren't abusing the system in one way or another. We've had a ton of YouTube videos made by people who don't understand the rules, that's fine.
My suggestion for you, if I've properly tied down your complaint, is to either stick with it and learn the rules and how things work and make a name for yourself that others here will recognize. Otherwise you likely will not succeed where others have. And others didn't just come here and achieve success in a handful of submissions. It took them a lot of time and effort. And rather than run off and make a YouTube video complaining about how they didn't like a submission failed or something else, they stuck with it and learned the ropes.
That's how you will succeed here.
The thing about the approval system is that you are missing a lot. For one thing, as you can see by the number of pending submissions, there are literally hundreds of submissions per day waiting approval. N4G even has a system in place to make approvals easier after certain periods of time has passed, and if no approval is to be found after those periods, then the story is auto-failed for lack of interest.
Interest is another thing. It's complex though because most users who approve anything don't even consider whether or not the story is interesting and worth being on the site, they just look for violations or not and approve based on that. This means that, beyond the already established rules that are part of the guidelines, and some judgement calls by the mods, there is pretty much no quality control here. That's why Top 5 Hottest Butts in Games articles can get approved, and a cool interview article can be failed.
What you may not know is that the real competition is not on the 3rd party site's end, the one with the stories trying to get approved. It's with contributors trying to submit stories without them being duplicates, or even just trying to get a good story to submit. This is why so many don't submit stories and why you can see that the site's Top Submitters are usually the same every month. Some might see 3 stories as a paltry amount, but when you've tried submitting stories that are then reported for any number of reasons over and over, you stop thinking it's worth your effort to even try and that's why the number of people who can approve stories is vastly smaller than the number of people who can't because they aren't trying to qualify.
Also, and this isn't something many would tend to consider but, time of day I've noticed does play a factor. The site itself is Norwegian and has a large European userbase. So often times I've submitted stuff late at night in EDT/EST that's been approved faster than middle of the day submissions simply due to more people being on the site in different timezones.
The approval system is more complex than people think.