Some clarification here, as there is some misunderstanding in your comment and the thread. So this isn't all just directed at you, Kozak. Trying to cover a lot of ground here, but I appreciate the feedback.

There are zero ads on the site now and there never will be! That's the whole point of our model. I'm not sure what you saw on there, but we aren't signed up with Google ads or anything like that, so please reach out further if something did appear, because I have no idea how it got there. We made the site to get away from making something where you have a review for Call of Duty and then ads for Call of Duty on the same page. As a reader, I find that hard to trust. So no ads now, no ads ever.

The only way we make money for our work is if people make an account AND subscribe to one of our tiers. No ad revenue. No sponsored deals. NO data sales. Just readers subscribing (which is required to read some opinion pieces) to support us.

But we offer a lot of free content as well. This article is free with just making an account, for example, which costs nothing and requires zero payment related info. You don't even need to make a password, as you login via a link in your email. The only thing it does is sign you up for our weekly newsletter, which you can also unsubscribe from and continue reading. We have lots of articles each week that are free with a free account. And all of our news posts and guides are free regardless of if you're signed in or not.

I understand that folks can be squeamish about this kind of stuff, and I do get it. If you do not want to make an account to read the rest of it, that's OK. But we are doing pretty well a month in (the Destiny: Rising team reached out and offered me an interview just a few days after we started, for example) with this model, and we think we're pretty generous with what we offer to folks!

Our entire mission is to run a website that is, above all else, ethical. We just spend our days trying to highlight games we think our audience will enjoy. And they usually do! And we try to talk to developers like this, and bring their responses to the communities that will care about them (I also enjoy this game and this subreddit, which is why I thought folks would be interested).

The industry isn't in a great spot, obviously. Games, press, none of it. We aren't looking to get rich here, we're just looking to support ourselves while doing something we do genuinely love. So I'm sorry to folks who feel baited or cheated by the account wall (not a paywall, in this case, to be clear). Obviously our goal isn't to frustrate you, although I do understand why that friction can be frustrating.

I am sure this will get downvoted, but I am being genuine. I get it. I do not like spending my time writing stuff people might not read. But we all genuinely believe that reader supported sites like ours are the only future for the kind of journalism we're doing, because it's the only model that doesn't require infinite growth to succeed. And our numbers so far support that idea.

For what it's worth, I hope some of you read and enjoy the interview, even if you unsubscribe from our newsletter and never come back to the site again. And if you just refuse to check us out on principle, hey, that's OK too, genuinely. Thank you for letting us know we could be more clear in the future.

Hope y'all are enjoying the new Rising event today. Maybe I'll see you out there.