Games industry doesn't care about gTLDs

Features
By published

icann tlds

If you missed the news yesterday, there's some big shake ups coming in the way top level domains (gTLDs) are allocated to new websites. gTLDs are the last sequence of letters in a URL, and at the moment only a few select organisations are allowed to manage national domains like .uk and .tv, or global ones like .com and .org.

And the games industry doesn't seem to give a fig.

The list includes proposals for .music, .adult, .book, .blog and – the most wanted of all - .app. 13 different companies pitched for that one, including Amazon and Google, unsurprisingly. Curiously, .home is the second most popular idea.

But as far as games go? Looks like the industry has treated the whole affair with disdain, preferring to stick to tried and tested .coms etc, or hashtags and Facebook links. There's .xbox and .playstation, for example, but not even Microsoft wants .pc. There's .aol and .amazon, but no .ubi or .blizzard, who've also sniffed away the chance to own .wow. Nikon have swooped in to protect their name, and even Auntie's gone and tried to bag .bbc, but .ea and .sega are conspicuous by their absence.

In fact, as far as I can see, none of the major third party publishers or PC developers have leapt to grab their own piece of cyberturf. The only actual games company to have gone after .game (popular, with five companies interested) is the Chinese online specialist which is working on Battlefield Online for EA, ChangYou.

Weird, when you think about it. Why is no-one interested? The full list is over here – please post below if I've missed something.