NeoGAF Owner Turned Down A $10 Million Buyout Offer
By Erik Sugay
If it isn’t considered the premier forum related to the video game industry, NeoGAF is easily one of the most prominent. Owner Tyler Malka, who goes by the name “EviLore,” shared that he’s turned down as much as $10 million from corporate suitors looking to buy the independent forum.
A little over one year ago, Malka took part in an interview with VG247 in which he revealed that, “on average, I get … I think I would say a buy-out offer on average every two weeks. I’ve had some really lucrative offers – $5 million offers,” and those came in early 2012.
In a recent thread, however, Malka simply responded that he has been “offered double since.”
Why does Malka continue to turn down some clearly not insignificant money? That same interview sheds some light on his thought process. “When you’re getting into that range – ‘retire comfortably and take care of everybody you care about for the rest of your life’ – sort of money, then you really have to decide what the most important thing to you is. Do you feel like you’ve accomplished all you want to accomplish or not?
“You can keep on doing things, obviously, after cashing out, but you can’t keep doing what… y’know, what you got to that level of success with. Like, I’d still be running NeoGAF, I’d still be in control of it. Eventually I would probably leave it behind and move onto some other project that I would actually have control over again – and I wasn’t really comfortable with making that decision.”
I certainly can’t fault him for that logic. Since that interview, NeoGAF has grown by leaps and bounds. The forum currently has around 132,000 members, nearly 600,000 threads, and over 67 million posts. That’s really impressive considering its strict approval process.
With industry veterans, developers, journalists and ardent enthusiasts making up NeoGAF’s community, the forum has been a steady source of relevant video game news and amusing culture commentary. If Malka ever does decide to cash in on his remarkable project, hopefully the forum continues to be the influential platform it is today.