Adrenaline Vault
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Angel Munoz
- Jeff Fox
 One of the logos used by the website, this one from 1999 to 2002 | |
Type of site | Video game website |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | United States |
| Owner | NewWorld.com, Inc. |
| Created by |
|
| Industry | Video game journalism |
| URL | www |
| Launched | 1995 |
| Current status | Defunct |
Content license | Proprietary[1] |
The Adrenaline Vault, often shortened to AVault, was an American video game website based in Irving, Texas, founded in 1995 and active until 2013. The site covered PC and console gaming. At various points in its lifecycle, its content included news, game and hardware reviews, previews, feature articles, hints and cheats, editorials, demo downloads, developer articles, giveaways, blogs, and forums.
Page-jacking incident
The Adrenaline Vault was founded by Angel Munoz, who was working at the time as president of a Dallas investment banking and consulting firm. Munoz launched the Adrenaline Vault in Irving, Texas in 1995 with partner Jeff Fox; he was motivated to start an online gaming website because he was a fan of video gaming and felt that print video gaming media was compromising truthfulness to sell out to video game companies. He staffed the Adrenaline Vault with gaming hobbyists committed to honesty and independence.[2] Publicity initially spread by word of mouth and by 2000 the Adrenaline Vault was one of the most visited gaming websites.[3] Over time, its parent company NewWorld.com shifted focus to esports, converted the website to a blog and its popularity waned.[2]
Munoz resigned as CEO of the Adrenaline Vault in 2011 and the board of directors announced their intention to sell off the company's assets.[4] In 2013, the Adrenaline Vault closed permanently after it was targeted by a DDoS attack that "resulted in the complete loss of the website and its databases."[5]
Notable staff members included publisher Brian Clair, who would go on to work as a producer on Sins of a Solar Empire[6] and director of publishing at Stardock,[7] editor Emil Pagliarulo, future video game designer at Bethesda,[8] and staff writer Pete Hines, future Senior Vice President at Bethesda.[9][10]
In 1999, the Adrenaline Vault discovered they were victims of a page hijacking attack that redirected Adrenaline Vault search results to a pornographic website. The attack involved cloning popular websites, including meta tags; the cloned pages showed up on AltaVista web searches and automatically redirected visitors to the pornographic site. The Federal Trade Commission determined that the attacks were perpetrated by a Portuguese hacker and an Australian pornographic website, and obtained an injunction to stop the scam.[11][12][3]