This is a post that I’ve known was coming for quite some time, but that doesn’t make it any easier to write. After more than 16 years TouchArcade will be closing its doors and shutting down operations. There may be an additional post here or there in the coming weeks as we try to honor any previously agreed to obligations, and a proper farewell post is in the works too, but as of now our normal daily operations have ceased. The reason we’re shutting down probably isn’t a surprising one: Money.
Many of you who have followed TouchArcade for a long time are well aware that we’ve had financial troubles for many years now, and to be frank I think it’s a miracle that we’ve been able to last as long as we have. The truth of the matter is that a website like ours just doesn’t make money anymore. To our own detriment we’ve resisted things like obnoxious in-your-face advertising, egregious clickbait headlines, or ethically questionable sponsorships, which sadly are the types of things that actually still make money in the internet of today.
There are a number of other reasons that have contributed to us reaching this point, but I’d rather not get into all that right now. TouchArcade was an institution for many millions of people over the past 16 years, and it was my full-time job for the last 14+ years. A solid third of my life. In many ways it is like one of my children, and having to say goodbye to it is very difficult to do. I’d really rather focus on all the great times we had than dwell on the things which we cannot change.
Also, as a man with a wife and two young children, and a mortgage, and all that other fun adult stuff, this is the end of my livelihood, and despite them being “freelancers” in a technical sense that is true for the other two people who have been the beating heart of TouchArcade, Shaun Musgrave and Mikhail Madnani. Which brings me to my next point…
PLEASE HIRE US!
The job market is not great anywhere, and finding new work is tough, especially in the games industry. If you are reading this and you have a need for very capable game industry veterans such as ourselves, please reach out.
Jared Nelson – That’s me! Obviously I have more than 14 years of experience working right in the very thick of the mobile gaming boom here at TouchArcade. Writing, editing, managing staff, traveling to conventions. I’ve pretty much done it all. I also have a pretty varied work history previous to TouchArcade, including in management roles, that I think gives me a really well-rounded set of skills. You can contact me on LinkedIn or by email at jared [at] toucharcade [dot] com.
Shaun Musgrave – Shaun has been with TouchArcade for a bit over 11 years, but has been in professional games media for more than 25 years overall. He is hands down one of the most gifted writers I have ever encountered, and if we needed a review for a big, important game and needed it by a very tight deadline Shaun was always dependable. He also uses his vast, almost uncanny knowledge of video game history to find interesting angles to write about games that only he could find. Shaun lives in Japan and is fluent in both Japanese and English, making him a great candidate for localization work as well. Please reach out to him at muzkind [at] hotmail [dot] com.
Mikhail Madnani – As part of TouchArcade for more than 7 years, Mikhail has been the workhorse of our staff. Posting the bulk of what you would see on a day to day basis, there is no possible way our website could have kept running for so long without Mikhail’s contributions. An expert at sniffing out interesting news stories and then posting them in a timely fashion, but also able to put together huge features like in-depth interviews and multi-platform reviews. His coffee-laden header images are legendary as well. If you need someone who can reliably and consistently post video game-related content, then I cannot recommend Mikhail highly enough. Reach out to him at hello [at] failgunner [dot] com.
So What Happens Now?
If there is some sort of silver lining to all of this, it’s that for the foreseeable future all of the content that has ever been posted to TouchArcade will remain online and accessible to all. More than 33,000 published articles, including more than 4,000 game reviews, not to mention all of our yearly Best Of content and Game of the Year picks. These should hopefully all continue living on into the future for reference purposes and just to look back and see how drastically the mobile gaming landscape changed over the last decade and a half.
We are also hoping to continue with our Podcast, The TouchArcade Show, which very recently just celebrated its 600th(!) episode. There are a couple co-hosts who have come and gone during the course of the podcast (shout out to Brand and Mike!) but myself and Eli Hodapp have been a constant presence on the show since the very beginning, and it’s really crazy that we’ve both spent 13+ years of our lives putting out hour-long podcasts on a (nearly) weekly basis.
Related to that, you may be wondering about our Patreon. The support from our Patreon has far and away been the biggest contributor to TouchArcade continuing to exist since we launched it in June of 2015, almost a decade ago. Our thoughts are to pivot the Patreon contributions towards keeping the podcast going, and perhaps occasional posts or special features written by the staff here. Perhaps a random “SwitchArcade” or a review about a particularly high-profile mobile game launch. Maybe we could even squeeze in a Game of the Year for this year? It’s just a nugget of an idea right now, but it would be pretty cool to see TouchArcade be able to live on even in that small way.
Whatever the case ends up being, I will explicitly change the verbiage of our Patreon to state that it’s no longer about supporting the website, and if people choose to stop contributing then that is totally understandable. If people are giving us money monthly I want to be absolutely transparent about what it’s going towards. Anyway, look for more news about this in the coming weeks, and at the very least be sure to follow along as a free member on our Patreon to stay in the loop. Also if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me at tips [at] toucharcade [dot] com or leave a comment below.
Well, that about does it, I think. I speak for all of us who have contributed to running TouchArcade over the past 16 years–from the co-founders Arnold Kim and Blake Patterson, to the first full-time hire and future Editor in Chief Eli Hodapp, and to the dozens of other writers and freelancers who have helped make TouchArcade what it is–we just want to give a sincere thank you for ever reading our site, listening to our podcast, or attending one of our events. It has been an absolute pleasure to have such a wonderful audience who appreciated what we did so much and we will all forever be grateful for the time that we were able to spend together.