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Shacknews Cofounder Maarten Goldstein - 25th anniversary interview

We spoke with Shacknews co-founder Maarten Goldstein to learn more about the site's history and his time with it.

Donovan Erskine

December 17, 2021 5:20 PM

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Shacknews celebrated its 25-year history in 2021, and we used that time to look back and reflect on how our website began and how much it’s grown over the last two decades and some change. One of the most important figures to the existence of Shacknews is Maarten Goldstein, a co-founder of the website. We sat down with Maarten in order to learn more about his time with Shacknews and what he’s been doing since.

Shacknews head of video Greg Burke sat down with Maarten Goldstein for a recent interview about Shacknews and its 25th anniversary. In the video, Maarten reflects on the website and how it’s changed over the years. “It was a lot less commercial, right,” Goldstein said, speaking to how the internet and culture surrounding it has changed since 1996 when Shacknews was born. “I don’t think necessarily that the community aspect has gone away. I mean, people are still modding games, people are still forming communities.” Shacknews was born as a website dedicated to Quake, and several members of our community have been with us since the 90s. In fact, Goldstein himself was recently inducted into the Shacknews Hall of Fame under the People category.

Goldstein also talked about how there were much more independent websites run by smaller teams back then. Now, those websites are less common and harder to come by. “It’s way more difficult to find these days. It’s way less organic, like, if it’s not linked on Twitter or Facebook then how is anyone going to find it?”

Maarten also gave Shacknews a special 25th anniversary shoutout. What better way to bring a close to our anniversary year than with a special word from one of the men that helped us get here.

The full interview with Maarten Goldstein is available on the Shacknews YouTube channel. There, you can find a slew of our other content, including our GOTY content that’s right around the corner. Subscribe there and to GamerHubTV for more exclusive content.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_