Gaming Trend is an internet website which provides videogame industry news, reviews, and previews for a variety of platforms (including PC and console videogames). Gaming Trend also provides a forum-based community for public discussion on a variety of topics. Gaming Trend is included among the websites used by the score aggregators Game Rankings and Metacritic in calculating the average review score for particular titles. History The site was originally founded in 1998 under the name ConsoleGold.com as a sister site to the well-known PC gaming site GoneGold.com, which prior to its demise, maintained a comprehensive list of current and upcoming release dates for PC games. GoneGold release dates were often cited by the popular print magazine PC Gamer. In 2005, ConsoleGold.com changed its name and website address to GamingTrend.com to reflect its increasingly comprehensive coverage of the entire gaming industry. The site is a commercial venture independently owned and operated by Ron Burke. Starforce controversy Gaming Trend has taken a strong position on the controversial StarForce copy protection system used to protect several PC game titles. Due to allegations of system instability caused by StarForce-protected games, the site has adopted an official policy of downgrading review scores for those titles. Additionally, those games are prominently marked with a "StarForce Alert!" tag to warn potential buyers.
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