About VGTimes
VGTimes is an independent games media outlet covering video games, technology, film and pop culture. Developer and games journalist Evgenii Sokolov, the founder of LibertyCity.net, launched it on July 19, 2010. Since then, VGTimes has grown from a niche site into a multilingual media platform, made by a team of more than 20 people.
What we do
News every day, in-depth articles every week and a game database that keeps growing.
News
Every day we follow dozens of outlets, insiders and official press releases, and every story cites its primary source: games, hardware, film and TV.
Reviews and features
Game and hardware reviews, previews, interviews, analysis, top lists and guides.
Game database
More than 63,000 games with PC requirement checks, mods, saves and trainers, a price aggregator and player reviews.
Registered readers can comment, post on the forum, write player reviews and publish their own posts through the UGC panel. Every user post is moderated and published with a UGC label. For lighter reading, we run quizzes and Versus battles.
Editorial standards and ethics
Money never buys a positive review or a higher score. Sponsored materials are always clearly labeled, and our verdicts stay independent of any advertising or partnership deals. Read our reviews.
Review scale
Masterpiece
Sets industry standards.
Excellent
Almost flawless.
Very good
A quality game with strong ideas.
Good
A solid game that meets expectations.
Satisfactory
Interesting ideas, uneven execution.
Mediocre
Serious flaws.
Poor
Technically or conceptually broken.
Principles
Every review says where the copy came from: provided by the publisher or bought by the editorial team.
Reviews are published under their authors' real names.
Verdicts are written by editors who have played the game. We use AI tools to help with research and translation, and every piece is checked and approved by an editor before publication.
If we get a fact wrong, we fix it within 24 hours and add an “Updated” note explaining the change.
Our story
Our sister project, LibertyCity.net, is dedicated to Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive titles.
Events and press trips
From Las Vegas, Taipei and Bangkok to Cologne, Tokyo and Istanbul.
Editor-in-Chief Rodion Ilin and guides editor Vladyslav Shamshurov spent the show on developer interviews, hands-on sessions and closed presentations, including a private showing of the Ballads of the Past expansion for The Witcher 3. Interviews from the show: SAW: Genesis, POSTAL 2 Redux, The Wolf Among Us Remastered, Valor Mortis, AION 2 and Transport Fever 3. We also met Ned Luke, who played Michael in GTA V, and gave him a LibertyCity.net T-shirt.
One of the world's largest computer hardware shows. We reported on GIGABYTE's new products and visited the TSMC Innovation Museum in Hsinchu, the heart of Taiwan's chip industry.
A record 17 interviews from a single trip, including Dead Space creator Glen Schofield, the Dead by Daylight team and Meghan Morgan Juinio, former director of product development at Santa Monica Studio.
Rodion Ilin covered one of Asia's biggest games shows and interviewed the developers of Vapor World: Over The Mind, Black Pulse and Interscape.
We flew to Tokyo to cover the show and interviewed the teams behind Dune: Awakening, The First Berserker: Khazan, Reanimal and other games.
The team covered the tournament at Ülker Sports Arena.
A VGTimes journalist was invited to an early look at the game.
IgroMir 2018 and 2019; WG Fest 2018, where VGTimes was an official media partner; the opening of Bethesda Softworks' office and the Fallout 76 launch; the Rage 2 launch; a Black Desert fan meeting with the developers; a Lost Ark update presentation; and a Fortnite tournament with NERF blasters.
Cited and quoted
VGTimes is cited as a source in more than 200 Wikipedia articles across eight language editions, including English, French, German, Spanish, Polish and Ukrainian (see examples). Publishers have quoted our reviews in trailers and marketing materials, and quotes from our reviews appear on Steam store pages.
Expert commentary: Rodion Ilin’s review of the year 2021 for the games industry outlet App2Top.
In academic research
- Digital Transformation of Russian Gaming Media: Analysis of Major Online Platforms — S. N. Ilchenko, D. M. Turunov, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia
- The Essence of Game Journalism and the Specifics of Its Formation in Russia — Belgorod State University
- Comparative Analysis of Interfaces of Websites about Computer Games — Conference proceedings: an ergonomics study of three games websites, including VGTimes
- Methods of Linguistic Localization of Video Games (Based on Sony Games) — Master's thesis, Ural Federal University
- The Translation of Video Games in the Paradigm of Audiovisual Translation — Scientific article
- The Concept of Lean Production in the Gaming Company Nintendo — Scientific article
- Content Analysis of Top Youth Resources in the Russian Segment of the Internet — Journal article
- On the Main Information Resources for Youth, Risks and Threats of Social Networks — Conference proceedings
- Contemporary Socio-Economic and Legal Research — Proceedings of an international conference
Interviews
A selection of our interviews, from gamescom and Tokyo Game Show to the creators of Dead Space and Disco Elysium.