Curse Media, the network of websites including Gamepedia and D&D Beyond, is being acquired by Fandom after two years with the video streaming platform Twitch.
Fandom announced the news in a blog post on Wednesday, remarking that this acquisition secures their status as “the #1 online experience for entertainment and gaming fan communities.” As the home of over 300,000 wiki communities, Fandom is already one of the largest sources of information for fans, which will be supplemented by the 2,200 communities from Gamepedia.
In the same post, a Fandom representative assured the communities of Gamepedia that “there will be no immediate impact to your user experience on either site” in the upcoming months. Their teams will work to “align” the larger network of sites in the coming year, with more to see in the first few months of 2019.
Many Wikia communities voiced their fears in response to this news, with a sense of disenfranchisement from the staff of Fandom being the most common theme. Since 2017, some communities have discussed migrating from Wikia, Fandom’s lead wiki site, citing similar discrepancies in particular with Fandom’s use of ads (via Kotaku).
Likewise, the co-founder of D&D Beyond, Adam Bradford, assured fans in a Reddit thread that “no staff changes other than giving us more to work with” would take place, following discontent with Fandom’s record of community support. In response to the community’s hesitance, he said that “skepticism is natural for something like this,” but that the service is headed for a bigger and better future with Fandom.
Curse Media also includes the sites Futhead and Muthead, the sports games fandom communities for the FIFA 19 and Madden 19 games respectively. The network of sites already boasts 20.8 million monthly users across all its properties, which will be aligned into Fandom’s wider reach when the deal is finalized in 2019.
