If ClassicGames.com was previously owned by Yahoo! as everything indicates, Yahoo! has been on a tear lately, selling off several of their domain name assets with the recent sales of MusicVideos.com, LookUp.com, and FreeComputers.com. They also made news when they sold contests.com last year. However, they did make a notable purchase: OMG.com for $80,000 for their Celebrity News web site.
In early January CookingGames.com sold for a whopping $350,000 to Hallpass Media. Sales petered off after that for “games” domains with ArcadeGames.org selling for $1,060 and ViewGames.com selling for $300 on Snapnames – that is, until today.
Sedo GreatDomains announced the sale of ClassicGames.com for $25,000.
Back in 1997, ClassicGames.com, was an internet game room, that featured multiplayer games online ranging from Chess to Freecell. But by 2000, the website ClassicGames.com was Yahoo! Games that offered games for kids. In 2005 was still Yahoo! Games.
Take a look at the screenshot on the left from 2005 via Archive.org. Around 2006, the site was no longer operational, and a message in the footer simply read, “For information regarding www.classicgames.com, please contact: [email protected]”.
Leap of Faith Financial Services Inc (http://www.loffs.com/) who own over 500 domain names, appear to be the new owners according to the Registrant records. The domain name gets over 60,000 searches globally.
The massively-multiplayer game “Glitch”, which is playable in the browser and built in the spirit of the web according to the website has launched their official website announcing the soon-to-launch game which will be in Private alpha shortly.
Our story ran on the popular Domain Industry web site Domaining.com.
We tweeted @Stewart, one of the founders of Tiny Speck yesterday and also emailed the News Tip to TechCrunch yesterday as a follow up to their July story that discussed the Tiny Speck project.
AND TODAY: TechCrunch’s lead story is none other than –
A quality backlink from a web site like TechCrunch never hurts, but unfortunately there was no mention of the News Tip we sent yesterday afternoon.
While it looks like the folks at CNET have been eagerly awaiting to publish their story, it seems to be quite the coincidence that after we post our story, that TechCrunch puts out the news today.
Either way, the premise for the game looks interesting and for the seller of the domain Glitch.com, they made a $16,000 profit before fees. Below is a screenshot from the Glitch Teaser video.
From the Domaining angle, there are a lot of great backstories to domain names: Glitch.com is another excellent example.
Blizzard Entertainment, the makers of some of the most popular computer games of all-time, ranging from World of Warcraft to Diablo, not only focus on creating amazing entertainment experiences, but they also focus on using generic keyword domain names for their company and several of their products.
The company’s web site runs on the domain name Blizzard.com: a site that gets well over 500K unique visitors every month. They’ve owned and operated Blizzard.com as their company website as far back as 1996, but that’s just one of many names they’ve owned and operated since the early nineties. Other names include Battle.net and Diablo.com.
While Blizzard doesn’t own every one of their product names, like Starcraft.com (Starcraft Marine who manufacture boats and pontoons own starcraft.com), the operators of Blizzard Entertainment certainly understand the value of domain names – and they have understood the power of domain names and the internet for years and years.
Their domains may not be “category-killer” names as one of our readers has pointed out (thanks ggc), but they certainly are premium generic keyword names that have been built into their own online successful brands – rather than just sitting parked, or changing owners every few years to the next highest buyer.
With an amazing track record of developing computer games, they’ve been matching their games with domain names.
Diablo, the action/RPG game is matched up to Diablo.com.
Warcraft, the game with over 11 million players online, is setup with Warcraft.com. If you type warcraft.com into your browser, you’re redirected to Blizzard’s battle.net page for a 10 day FREE trial to World of Warcraft. Battle.net receives over 1 million unique visitors per month according to the latest Compete.com profile.
The List goes on and on. To top it off, they acquire the .net and .org versions, too. From Blizzard.net to Warcraft.org.
If you’ve wondered if there are end user companies out there who get domain names – Blizzard Entertainment is a great example of an innovative company with a great portfolio of names.
One of Hallpass Media's former properties that they ended up selling -- AddictingGames.com - gets over 5 million unique visitors per month. While they no longer own that property, their success stories don't stop there.
CookingGames.com sold for six-figures as reported by Ron Jackson’s DNJournal and the news has sparked a lively discussion on the internet, especially among domainers. The Seller cashed in BIG TIME and as Larry Fischer over at DirectNavigation.com has pointed out, the extremely high sales price shouldn’t be such a shock.
The new owners over at Hallpassmedia own the casual games industry by acquiring and developing premium GAMES domains.
Shortly after Larry’s post went online, Bill Karamouzio the CEO of HallpassMedia commented several times on the blog offering great insights into domaining and the GAMES niche.
Domaining is not very well known outside of its circle, it would seem online gaming is even less known within the domaining circles even though gaming and online gaming are a huge part of the internet. Google trends and many other sources all show the growing trends in casual gaming…
You can read the full discussion thread over at DirectNavigation.com for lots of great information.
More About Hallpassmedia
Bill runs Hallpassmedia which dominates the casual games industry online with category-killers like WordGames.com, CoolGames.com, and the list is long. According to the site’s About Page:
HallpassMedia is designed to be a one stop network for all your online entertainment needs. We continue to build out our portfolio of premium domain names with targeted content, regular updates and a user experience that is unmatched by other websites. Our goal is the become the largest independent entertainment network online!
The Hallpassmedia web site has tons of useful information – ranging from industry news about the GAMES space online to lots of background information on the company as well as their domain names, domain development projects and much much more.
Hallpassmedia has the formula for continued success with their properites. Thanks to Bill for commenting, we’ve made a correction. If you’d like to know more about AddictingGames.com – here’s the scoop straight from the Hallpassmedia site:
In 2004, using private capital, FPS Networks purchased the domain AddictingGames. Within 3 months of redevelopment FPS Networks had increased traffic by over 600%, catapulting AddictingGames into one of the top 5 casual gaming sites worldwide. Attracting the attention of many VC firms and entertainment networks FPS Networks decided to sell the site to Atom Entertainment (now part of MTV Networks) in 2005. AddictingGames continues to be one of the worlds largest casual game websites and FPS Networks has worked with the MTV team for a smooth transition and continuous growth.
Some of HallPassMedia’s Properties Under Development
Bill Karamouzis, the CEO of Hallpass Media has created quite a buzz recently in the Domain Community over his purchase of the domain name CookingGames.com for $350,000. Bill even wrote a guest post on DirectNavigation.com that shared the story of another one of his web properties StickGames.com – a domain name that was previously owned by one of the “hardest, most stubborn, and least motivated sellers on Earth” – as Bill puts it in his guest blog.
One can only guess who that might be…
Why Pay $100K for the Domain Name StickGames.com?
The answer is easy: there’s literally hundreds of thousands of people who enjoy playing “stick games” online. Originally when Bill approached the owner about acquiring the name, the owner wanted $250,000. How’d the deal go down?
The domain was getting tons of traffic (confirmed between 1000-1500 type in a day) and the owners after our first contact wanted 250k for the domain, no stats and no revenue figures to be provided. I knew the domain was making nothing for them though, by using automated parking technology I could see all the ads were displaying “stick” game type stuff. Like hockey, skating and ads of this nature. I knew the disconnect was there and viewers were coming to play games and being shown hockey ads so the click through rates must have been nil. I countered offered with a final offer of 100k after a few weeks of back
and forth they relented….
StickGames.com Today
While the games market, like the dating market, is very competitive, he was still willing to a six-figure amount for the name. Bill writes:
It was alot of hard work and networking with many more factors then I’ve been able to list, but the point is a good business plan, hard work and the right assets in this case strong generic domains have helped us in a very crowded and competitive market. We are on track to recover our investment cost in the next 3 months, during one of the worst recessions of our time. Still deals to be had, still many opportunities to be had. Best of luck everyone one!
StickPage.com, a fully developed website with stick figure movies, stick games and more, is a major competitor to Bill's StickGames.com web site -- pulling in over 600,000 unique visitors per month.
The phrase “stick games” gets about 135,000 Exact Local Searches. That’s a lot of interest, and likely a lot of type-in traffic. Since launching the stickgames.com web site — from the low X,XXX visitors to nearly 100,000 visitors per month according the December 2009 metrics on Compete.
And there are a lot of even smaller competitors trying to grab a piece of the Stick Games market; from theStickGames.com, to OnlyStickGames.com and even StickGameAddict.com. TheStickGames.com and OnlyStickGames.com, both receive about 8,000 visitors per month.
Type in the phrase stick games — and stickgames.com owns the top spot, but the list of web sites dedicated to stick games goes on and on and on. From stickflashgames.com to freestickgames.net.
We even did some available domain searches to see if there was anything worth hand-registering, but we didn’t find anything. Names like StickFigureGame.net and FunnyStickGames.com were two names we considered, but passed since we don’t know much about the GAMES market.
If you’ve played a few of the games on the StickGames.com website like “Stick Figure Penalty 2”, they’re pretty fun. In Stick Figure Penalty 2 you actually get to choose how you want to die, ranging from a large nail gun to a chainsaw. The disclaimer states, “not for the faint of heart”.
We can see how these online games, particularly stick games, can be addicting.
By the way, AddictingGames.com was one of Bill’s original properties that was sold to MTV Networks.
In 2004, using private capital, FPS Networks purchased the domain AddictingGames. Within 3 months of redevelopment FPS Networks had increased traffic by over 600%, catapulting AddictingGames into one of the top 5 casual gaming sites worldwide. FPS Networks sold AddicitingGames to Atom Entertainment (now part of MTV Networks) in 2005. AddictingGames continues to be one of the worlds largest casual game websites and FPS Networks worked with the MTV team for a smooth transition and continuous growth.”
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