So it goes on with 4Players.de

Last August, sad news for many people was published on 4Players.de: “More than 14,500 reports, over 200,000 news and around 60,000 videos: the magazine thanks you for your loyalty and says goodbye in the fall.” That was perfect! Hundreds of comments below the article speak for themselves – that something had been created here over the course of 20 years that meant something to you, the readers. The old editors, who had been aware of the plans of 4Players GmbH for a while and had received the cancellations, were touched by your feedback and disappointed not to be able to continue to fill this project with life.

Something was set in motion shortly after this news: Axel Telzerow, editor-in-chief of the consumer magazine IMTEST at the FUNKE media group, learned from this report that the portal was planned to be closed. His idea: don’t let 4Players.de die, but revive it under the umbrella of a large publishing house, with completely different possibilities than the website had, especially recently.

That also explains another message from November 1st: “4Players.de continues with new management.” In the meantime, talks had taken place between the old operator 4Players GmbH and the prospective buyer Funke Mediengruppe. For this reason, Mathias Oertel, who was reactivated at short notice, and freelance authors, but not the old editorial team, continued to provide 4Players.de with news and tests from November. Because the former team had, and this should be expressly emphasized here, the terminations in the mail before the current new operator had even a clue about it. So because of “First quit everyone and then hire them again for less money” rumors…

We fast-forward to the present, to April 2022: 4Players.de is now part of the FUNKE media group, you can already read the business version of this news here. What does that mean? We can finally take off and make something nice out of 4Players.de again. With the popular mixture of current news and detailed and competent game tests, there will of course also be video content, previews, trade fair reports, retro features and exciting new formats. A greater focus than before will be on testing hardware, also because we want to use synergy effects here with the work of the IMTEST editorial team and the in-house test laboratory.

Very crucial for us, but also for you – as your comments suggest – is the question of the staff. Who writes for the new 4Players.de, who gambles through the games, who will appear in front of the camera? We certainly won’t be able to get the whole old band back on track – but you don’t have to do without familiar faces. So far the new 4Players.de team in Hamburg consists of Axel, Boris, Matthias and Timur, in Berlin Dana and Matthias are working on the project. We are in talks with seasoned former 4Players.de editors as well as with young talents and will keep you up to date on what is happening behind the scenes.

We would be really happy if you give this new project a fair chance and are just as keen to fill the community with life as we are to create fresh content for 4Players.de.

PS: Speaking of community: You know the 4Players.de forum like the back of your hand and would like to actively contribute to a friendly, constructive and civilized cooperation there. Then you would probably be the right person for the role of a moderator – please send us an email to 4players@funkemedien.de so that we can make the 4P forum even better together.