Gamesville - Lycos

Lycos

In November 1999, internet portal Lycos announced that it would spend $270 million in stock to acquire Gamesville.com, which at that time had approximately 2.2 million registered users.

Gamesville leveraged its relationship with Lycos to obtain the rights to produce the first (and to date, the only) online version of the popular television game show The Price Is Right in 2002 although the license was dropped after one year.

In 2002, Monster.com profiled Gamesville's Rewards Manager, Josh Yeager, citing him as holding one of the Top 10 Coolest Jobs on the Internet. Yeager estimated that he sent out between 1,000 to 2,500 prize checks weekly, indicating that "some days I feel like the Bob Barker of the Internet, other days like Santa Claus himself." There is in fact more truth to this statement than at first glance, as Gamesville, for a brief time in 2002, had hosted the exclusive Internet game rights to The Price Is Right.

Over the years, Gamesville developed several games without prizes including a multiplayer online version of Spite and Malice and an online version of Spider Solitaire.

Drifting away from its focus on prizes caused the number of visitors to Gamesville.com to slowly but steadily decline.

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