Affiliate Disclosure
Some links on Arcade Spot are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, we may earn a commission. It costs you nothing extra, and it never changes what we recommend or how we score a game.
That is the whole disclosure in three sentences. The rest of this page explains it properly, because we would rather over-explain how we make money than have you wonder.
How Arcade Spot makes money
Arcade Spot is free to use and always has been. Playing a game here costs nothing, there is no subscription, and there is nothing to buy. The site is funded three ways:
- Distributor revenue share. Many of the games we publish are licensed from game distributors who share advertising revenue generated inside the game with both us and the original developer. This applies to a game whether we rate it highly or poorly.
- Affiliate commissions. A small number of outbound links to third-party products earn us a commission if you buy. That is what this page is about.
What an affiliate link is
An affiliate link is an ordinary link with a tracking code attached. If you click it and go on to buy something from that retailer, the retailer pays us a small percentage of the sale as a referral fee.
You never pay more. The price is identical whether you use our link or type the address in yourself. The commission comes out of the retailer’s margin, not your pocket. You are never required to use our links, and nothing on this site is gated behind them.
Where affiliate links appear, and how you’ll spot them
Affiliate links appear only in editorial content — guides, recommendation posts and hardware or store references. They do not appear on game pages, in game frames, or anywhere that would interfere with play.
What affiliate relationships do not affect
This is the part that matters most, so we will be specific.
- Ratings. Scores come from playing the game against fixed criteria, documented on How We Rate. No commercial relationship feeds into a score.
- Rankings and collections. A product cannot buy its way into a “best of” list, and position in a list is never sold.
- What we cover. We do not choose games or topics based on whether they can be monetised with affiliate links.
- What we say. We recommend things we would recommend to a friend, and we criticise things that deserve it, including products we earn from. No partner sees content before publication or has any right of approval.
The full framework is in our Editorial Policy. If you ever think a recommendation on this site reads like it was bought, tell us — we take that seriously.
What we don’t do
- No undisclosed sponsored content. Anything paid for is labelled as paid, at the top, before you read it.
- No affiliate links aimed at children. We do not place affiliate links in content directed at under-13 audiences.
- No fake urgency or invented deals. If we mention a price or a discount, it was real when we checked, and we say when we checked.
Review products and gifts
If we are ever given a product, a game key or access at no cost in order to write about it, we say so in the piece itself. Receiving something free does not buy a positive write-up, and we return or disclose anything of significant value. Our editors do not accept payment from developers, distributors or retailers in exchange for coverage.
Cookies and tracking
Affiliate links usually set a cookie in your browser so the retailer can attribute a purchase to us. That cookie is set by the retailer or the affiliate network, not by Arcade Spot, and it is governed by their privacy policy as well as ours. How we handle data on this site is set out in our Privacy Policy.