GameFAQs is a website that hosts FAQs and walkthroughs for video games. It was created in November 1995 by Jeff "CJayC" Veasey and has been owned by CNET Networks since May 2003. The site has a database of video game information, cheat codes, reviews, game saves, and screenshots, much of which is submitted by volunteer contributors. The systems covered include the 8-bit Atari platform through modern consoles, as well as computer games. Submissions made to the site are reviewed by the site's current editor, Allen "SBAllen" Tyner.

GameFAQs hosts an active message board community, which has a separate discussion board for each game in the site's database, along with a variety of other boards. Since 2003, most of the game-specific boards have been shared between GameFAQs and GameSpot, another CNET website. The site also runs a daily opinion poll and tournament contests.

GameFAQs has been positively reviewed by The Guardian and Entertainment Weekly. As of 2008, GameFAQs.com is one of the 300 highest-trafficked English-language websites according to Alexa.

History

GameFAQs was started as the Video Game FAQ Archive on November 5, 1995. Hosted on America Online, it originally served as a mirror of Andy Eddy's FTP FAQ archive. The initial version of the site had approximately 10 pages and 100 FAQs."Interview with Jeff Veasey" (2002-03-02). The Gaming Files. WXBH AM-1190 (Cobleskill, New York). In 1996, the site moved to its current domain at gamefaqs.com and changed its name to GameFAQs. At this time, GameFAQs listed less than 1000 FAQs and guides and was updated on an irregular basis.

During the following months, the site grew in content and in design; two different styles were introduced in early 1997 to accommodate the support of tables in web browsers (or the lack thereof). Two key features of the site—the game search engine and the contributor recognition pages—were planned at this time.

IGN affiliation

In 1997, GameFAQs became an independent affiliate of the Imagine Games Network (IGN), leading to the placement of affiliate links on the home page. User contests were introduced during this period; the first monthly contest, which was held in 1998, received 253 entries. GameFAQs went through several design changes, including a pink color scheme, before arriving at the blue-colored layout that was used until 2004.

In November 1999, several changes occurred in rapid succession. On November 5, a search box was added to every page, at which time the site was celebrating its fourth anniversary. On November 7, the message boards opened in a beta testing mode. The "Poll of the Day" was introduced at the end of the month. These changes marked Veasey's increased concentration on the site, and it was around this time that GameFAQs became his full-time job. Until this time, he had been working as a programmer. On August 9, 2000, the site received one million hits in a single day for the first time. By 2001, the "GameFAQs Chat" (an IRC chat server) had been launched; however, it was removed in May 2001 due to administrative issues.