A quick word about how we’re covering Black Friday deals this year

Morning everyone. Black Friday 2022 is upon us and we’ll be covering it a bit differently to previous years – better, hopefully, albeit still in a way where an explanation might help. Basically, we’ll still be highlighting good hardware deals through our Black Friday hubs and the occasional standalone post, but this time we’re teaming up with our Gamer Network friends/colleagues/corporate co-underlings at Eurogamer other DigitalFoundry to share the load.

Through some new syndication doodads installed in our respective sites’ backends, we’ll be cross-posting these hubs and deal highlights so that one article can appear across multiple sites at once. What this means to you, essentially, is that you may see Black Friday content from non-RPS sources on the RPS homepage’s deals shelf, or perhaps click a deals hub link on RPS and be taken to a Eurogamer article. Likewise, my coverage here will show up on the other sites as well.

I hope that doesn’t sound too disconcerting – the plan for any non-RPS content appearing on our site is to keep it limited to a certain subject (Black Friday) and in a certain place (the Deals shelf). Literally, just that single row of Deals posts that already exists on the homepage – not in the Latest feed, social channels or anywhere else. We’re not trying to spam you with any more affiliate links than usual, or water down RPS’s identity by littering it with articles from our stablemates. But we do reckon it will make for better, more useful, ideally less typo-ridden (sorry) Black Friday coverage, as splitting up a single network-wide collection of articles allows us individual hardware writers to focus more keenly on navigating specifics areas of the Black Friday deal storm. I, for example, can keep a closer eye on gaming mouse deals while EG pick up graphics card deal duties, allowing me to spend more time finding, assessing, and writing about peripheral discounts.

Besides, most of what you see will just come from me and DF’s Will Judd, who handles most of our deals coverage anyway in a freelance capacity. And yes, only PC-related content will be syndicated to RPS; we’re not going to start highlighting Nintendo Switch cases or anything.

So that’s that! The only other thing I’ll say, before entering an ecommerce trance for the next week, is that I know we’re maybe not living in the best economic conditions to go off splashing a load of cash on computer bits. Everything feels twice as expensive as it was in August, often for reasons that range from simple bullshit to crimes against humanity, and nobody needs a new SSD as much as they need to heat their home. Remember, then, that you’re only truly saving money with a Black Friday sale when you buy something that you were going to buy anyway.