About VGTime

VGTime

VGTime, published at vgtime.com and known in Chinese as Youxi He — "Game Core" — is a Shanghai video-game news outlet founded in 2015. It publishes console and PC game news, reviews and features for Chinese gamers, and has expanded into original video and events. Where China's first-generation game portals were shaped by the console ban and the download era, VGTime belongs to the generation after: founded in the year the ban was fully lifted, native to social distribution and video, and able to cover consoles as a legal, growing Chinese market from its first day.

Founded in Shanghai in 2015

VGTime was founded in 2015 in Shanghai, per Chinese games-media coverage. The date is the key to the outlet's character. In July 2015 China's Ministry of Culture completed the nationwide lifting of the fifteen-year console restrictions; the PlayStation 4 had launched officially in China that March, the Xbox One the previous September. A console-focused Chinese outlet founded in 2015 was therefore the first of its kind that did not have to be built around a grey market: it could assume official hardware, Chinese storefronts, launch events on Chinese soil, and platform-holders with Chinese offices to interview. Shanghai compounded the advantage — the city hosts ChinaJoy, the country's largest games exhibition, held there since 2004, and the Shanghai Free Trade Zone had been the pilot area for console legalisation in 2014.

The Youxi He identity

VGTime's Chinese name, Youxi He, puns on "core": the core of the game, and the core gamer. The branding announces an editorial stance — depth for committed players rather than breadth for casual traffic. Chinese games-media coverage of VGTime describes an outlet built around news, reviews and features, the classic quality-press triangle of game media, aimed at readers who follow console and PC gaming as a culture: its development studios, its creators, its history and its craft. In a Chinese market whose gaming revenues were already dominated by mobile titles, choosing the console-and-PC core as a beat was a deliberate counter-positioning, betting that the post-ban console audience and the enduring PC audience would reward specialist attention.

News, reviews and features

VGTime's sourced description lists console and PC game news, reviews and features. The news operation covers the global console industry — platform-holder announcements, release dates, sales and policy — rendered for Chinese readers with the local angles that matter: China approvals, Chinese-language support, regional pricing and availability. Reviews serve the purchase decisions of players buying at Chinese retail or through digital stores. Features are where the outlet distinguishes itself from faster, thinner competitors: longer interviews, retrospectives and industry analysis that assume reader knowledge. That mix, maintained since 2015, positions VGTime as the quality end of the new generation — closer in spirit to a games magazine than to the download portals of the 2000s.

Original video and events

The sourced description also records VGTime expanding into original video and events — the two directions in which all post-2015 Chinese game media had to grow. Video is the native format of the social era: gameplay features, interviews and commentary distributed through Chinese video platforms reach audiences that no longer visit homepages. Events — attending, covering and participating in the circuit of ChinaJoy, publisher showcases and community gatherings — give a Shanghai outlet physical presence in its own city's industry calendar. For a title founded in 2015, these were not pivots but founding conditions: VGTime was born into the era in which a game outlet is a cross-platform brand, and its expansion into video and events simply follows the logic of its birth year.

The post-ban console market it covers

The market VGTime reports on would have been unrecognisable to the founders of A9VG or TGBUS. Consoles are sold openly; the Nintendo Switch arrived officially via Tencent in December 2019; the PlayStation 5 launched in mainland China in May 2021; Chinese-developed console and PC titles — most visibly Black Myth: Wukong, released in August 2024 to global success — made China a producer, not only a consumer, of core games. Game approvals and content regulation still shape what is officially available, and committed players continue to straddle domestic and overseas ecosystems, so the interpretive work of a specialist outlet remains necessary. VGTime's decade coincides almost exactly with this normalised-but-regulated era, and its archive is a chronicle of it.

Shanghai's game-media cluster

Shanghai is a natural home for VGTime. The city hosts ChinaJoy each summer, the headquarters or major offices of many Chinese game companies, and a dense community of core gamers formed during the import era around its electronics markets and game shops. It was also, through the Free Trade Zone, the legal beachhead of console legalisation. A Shanghai console outlet founded in 2015 thus sits at the intersection of the industry it covers: publishers, exhibitions, regulators' pilot programmes and readers are all local. VGTime's events presence draws on that geography, and its coverage benefits from proximity to the companies and shows that generate Chinese console news.

Position among Chinese game media

VGTime's generational position is its directory significance. Behind it stand the ban-era institutions: A9VG (2000) with its forums, TGBUS (2004) with its portal breadth, 3DM and Ali213 on the PC side. VGTime, founded in 2015, shares their subject — console and PC core gaming — but none of their founding constraints. It never distributed downloads in a piracy economy, never had to treat its core hardware as contraband, and never knew a homepage-centric internet. Comparing VGTime with its elders isolates exactly what changed in Chinese game media between 2000 and 2015: distribution, legality and format changed completely; the editorial core of news, reviews and features did not.

Why VGTime matters

VGTime matters as evidence that Chinese console media did not end with the ban-era generation but regenerated. Its founding in 2015 — the year of full legalisation — and its growth into video and events show a specialist outlet built for the legal console market's first decade. For readers, it provides Chinese-language news, reviews and features on console and PC gaming from Shanghai; for the directory, it completes the generational arc of Chinese game media, from localisation volunteers and grey-market forums to a modern, multi-format news brand covering a market its predecessors could only imagine.

VGTime's trajectory also illustrates the economics of the new generation. Without a download business or a mass forum to monetise, a 2015-founded specialist lives on the quality-press revenues of the social era — advertising around trusted content, video partnerships, events and brand work — which reward exactly the assets VGTime built first: an audience of committed console and PC players whose attention is scarce and valuable to the platform-holders and publishers now competing for the legal Chinese market. In that sense the outlet's business model and its editorial model are the same bet, placed in the year the market it serves became fully legal — and, a decade on, that bet is still being honoured by a loyal readership.

Official website

VGTime is published from Shanghai at its official website, vgtime.com. Its Chinese name is Youxi He. Readers should distinguish it from the Russian games outlet VGTimes (vgtimes.com), a separate publication with a confusingly similar name; the Chinese outlet founded in 2015 is VGTime at vgtime.com.