If you get your video game news from Twitter, then you’ve almost surely come across @Nibellion. The news aggregator who sported a profile picture of Mob Psycho 100‘s Shigeo Kageyama was the first person to inform many people about the goings-on in the game industry, be it release dates or other important announcements. Yes, we are using past tense here: Nibel has decided to “move on from Twitter.”
If you check the @Nibellion Twitter feed now, you’ll find a locked account with protected tweets. Before shutting it down, Nibel did issue a statement about their departure. “After some introspection, I’ve made the decision to focus my time and energy elsewhere,” it reads. “This marks the end of my video games coverage and my active participation in this platform.” The Twitter handle remains claimed and locked to avoid any potential impersonators.
One might consider Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter to be the impetus for Nibel leaving the social media platform, but that’s not the (whole) case. Not too long ago, Nibel created a Patreon page for anyone who wished to pledge money to help with news aggregation. One might think Nibel would leave Twitter to focus entirely on Patreon, perhaps with some sort of newsletter, but that’s not the case either: the Patreon page is shutting down as well. As it stands, Nibel looks to be getting out of the video games news race entirely. The farewell Patreon post explains that Nibel wasn’t bringing in enough funding to keep the account sustained. Combine that with the current and pending changes to Twitter, and you can understand why this departure happened.
Still, it’s a bummer for anyone who looked to Nibel as their primary news source. With nearly half a million Twitter followers, the account certainly had a big audience. One of the only comparable Twitter accounts is @Wario64, with just over a million followers.
