# Rock Paper Shotgun (روك بيبر شوتغن)

> Rock Paper Shotgun is currently blocked in Syria, as of 2026-08-09.

- Status: blocked
- Outreach: Contacted
- Company: [Ziff Davis](https://unblocksyria.com/en/companies/ziff-davis.md)
- Categories: News & Media
- Official site: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/
- Community votes: 5
- Last updated: 2026-08-09
- Page: https://unblocksyria.com/en/services/rock-paper-shotgun

## About

PC gaming news, reviews, and features from a long-running British video game journalism outlet

## Activity summary

Blocked in Syria. Community testing in April 2026 confirmed that the site returns an "Error 403 Unavailable" page from its cache server on Syrian connections, the same infrastructure as its sibling outlets. A community volunteer made first contact in August 2026, petitioning the parent company and Gamer Network to remove the country level geofence and noting that the UK publisher is bound by the updated OFSI framework. No response yet.

## Community reports

- 2026-08-06 — Contacted Company. A community volunteer sent a detailed compliance petition to Ziff Davis at legal@ziffdavis.com, dpo@ziffdavis.com and privacy@ziffdavis.com, copying Gamer Network at contact@eurogamer.net, and named rockpapershotgun.com among the properties blocked for Syria. The email documented that requests from Syrian IP addresses are dropped at the content delivery network or web application firewall layer with an HTTP 403 Forbidden response, set out the 2025 US, EU, UK and multilateral sanctions changes, and noted that Gamer Network Limited is registered in the United Kingdom and therefore bound by the updated OFSI framework. This is the first outreach on Rock Paper Shotgun.
- 2026-04-17 — Investigated. Community testing confirmed that Rock Paper Shotgun is blocked in Syria. Accessing rockpapershotgun.com from a Syrian IP returns an «Error 403 Unavailable» page served by a Varnish cache server with internal error code 54113. (evidence: https://api.unblocksyria.com/files/evidence/qerok17bv6b0abcodnceayfr/x19jc1neembm0h47bf5rgqre-capture-2026-04-17-17-48-33-580.png)

## Context

These are geo-restrictions the companies applied themselves, not filtering by Syrian ISPs and not a legal requirement. US and EU sanctions on Syria were lifted in 2025. See https://unblocksyria.com/llms.txt for the regulatory summary and https://unblocksyria.com/en/about for citations to the specific orders and regulations.

## Machine-readable

- JSON: https://api.unblocksyria.com/services/rock-paper-shotgun?locale=en
- Timeline JSON: https://api.unblocksyria.com/services/rock-paper-shotgun/timeline?locale=en
- HTML: https://unblocksyria.com/en/services/rock-paper-shotgun
- Other languages: https://unblocksyria.com/ar/services/rock-paper-shotgun.md, https://unblocksyria.com/ku/services/rock-paper-shotgun.md