Game Informer shut down

[Clockwork Knight]

It's interesting that they gave up the ghost straight after all the Veilguard promos. I wonder if they were hoping that would generate enough traffic to keep them limping along a bit longer but it failed to live up to expectations?

Gamestop suddenly decided to do it surprising everyone.



https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indu...d-then-gamestop-nukes-the-account-from-orbit/

Last week, GameStop abruptly shut down its long-running gaming magazine, Game Informer. The staff was blindsided by the news when they got to work on Friday morning—all 13 employees were laid off on the spot, and the next magazine issue, which was nearly complete, will not be finished.

GameStop announced the shutdown on the official Game Informer X account with a goodbye statement thanking readers for being a part of its "epic quest." Game Informer staff suggested they had nothing to do with the brief, cringey statement that reads like ChatGPT output. Soon after, they were alarmed to find that the entire Game Informer website had disappeared: years and years of articles had been replaced with the same GameStop statement.

This morning, the Game Informer X account went active again. This time, a former Game Informer staffer seemingly took the reins one last time to share a proper farewell:

"Our 33-year legacy deserves a genuine goodbye, written by a former Game Informer member. Were heartbroken by the shutdown of our publication, yet we leave with pride knowing we poured everything we had into it. In the words of our editor-in-chief: 'Be well, Play well.'"

Attached to the post were images of the Game Informer masthead as of the magazine's closure, a lean staff of 13 helming what was once one of the most popular publications in the US.

As noticed by Destructoid's Eric Van Allen, soon after the post was published, both it and the entire Game Informer X account disappeared. The Game Informer X account no longer exists, just like the website. It seems GameStop didn't appreciate Game Informer wanting to go out on its own terms.

While GameStop continues its course of erasing Game Informer's footprint from the internet, former GI staff at the independent publication MinnMax are planning a celebration of the publication's legacy with a series of videos and podcasts.

edit: though now that I think about it by "they" you probably meant Gamestop.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

And nothing of any value was lost....

 

[Infinitron]

All the Veilguard articles are now deleted.

Probably no grounds for a lolsuit here unfortunately:

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I’m surprised they just randomly shut Game Informer down. It wasn’t that long ago they were one of the best selling magazines on the market. Like in the top five. I guess the very stupid decision of not offering a physical magazine anymore killed them.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I’m surprised they just randomly shut Game Informer down. It wasn’t that long ago they were one of the best selling magazines on the market. Like in the top five. I guess the very stupid decision of not offering a physical magazine anymore killed them.

Eh, I doubt that such magazines are still profitable nowadays unless they're print-on-demand and/or subscription-based. And even then, the amount of magazines that you'd have to sell in order to make a decent profit and not just pocket change aren't something that you can feasibly build your business model around. Lots of traditional magazines and smaller news outlets switched to digital media over the years due to financial necessity more than anything else.

 

[Chuck Norris]

I don't get it. Why the fuck did they destroy the website? Just achieve the website and keep the servers running. I was using the interview they had with Edmund McMillen for research purposes. Which I had found through Google.

The people who say "nothing of value was lost" don't realize that Game Informer had a lot of valuable articles and interviews that you could find through Google, while not necessarily following the magazine or supporting it.

This is just fucked up.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

You could probably still access them through the Wayback Machine, Chuck Norris.

 

[Chuck Norris]

Yeah, I know it's technically possible to do that. I meant the real loss is that people in the future won't have access to them, cause the results won't show up on Google.

For someone who does research, destroying decades of research material like this is nauseating.

 

[ds]

Old pages show up less and less on google anyway, it's heavily biased towards recent crap (mostly spam).

 

[Don Peste]

Don't worry, once GameBanshee relaunches with its new design, we won't need anything else for game information. *hand gestures making circles*

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I’m surprised they just randomly shut Game Informer down. It wasn’t that long ago they were one of the best selling magazines on the market. Like in the top five. I guess the very stupid decision of not offering a physical magazine anymore killed them.

Eh, I doubt that such magazines are still profitable nowadays unless they're print-on-demand and/or subscription-based. And even then, the amount of magazines that you'd have to sell in order to make a decent profit and not just pocket change aren't something that you can feasibly build your business model around. Lots of traditional magazines and smaller news outlets switched to digital media over the years due to financial necessity more than anything else.

If you’re like a top five magazine you should be profitable, which at least just a few years ago they were. Like it wasn’t that long ago they were bigger than People and Better Homes and Gardens.

Game Informer also seemed to move to a purely subscription based model, and did seem to be print on demand. They haven’t had a print magazine in store since COVID it sounds like, and I think they stopped selling outside of GameStop years ago. Although I’d think print on demand would cost more. Printing isn’t actually all that expensive when you’re doing it in large numbers. You’re more paying to turn the machine on and off than you are the paper running through it. And Game Informer used to sell a lot, I can’t find more recent number, (although I know they were still up there after this) but according to Wikipedia in 2017 they were selling 7 million copies and were the fourth best selling magazine.

It’s also weird they just shut down since this year they just announced they were returning to offering a subscription outside of GameStop rewards system. I just saw that was a thing they were doing a few weeks ago. Not sure why or when they stopped doing that.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

It's probably no coincidence that less than 24 hours after Game Informer folded that a sizeable torrent containing scans of most of the back issues started doing the rounds.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

We are living in a gaming crash.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I was thinking a lot of Game Informer back issues had been up on Internet Archives for a while.

This Game Informer stuff reminds me that I had a Game Informer subscription back in 2019 from getting some stuff at GameStop, and I’m pretty sure my mailman stole the Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 issue.

I also had a subscription like a year ago that I got when doing the GameStop thing again, but it was digital, and I never ended up even looking at it.

 

[Zlaja]

I’m pretty sure my mailman stole the Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 issue.

 

[mediocrepoet]

We are living in a gaming journalism crash.

FTFY

 

[Baron Dupek]

https://archive.org/details/game-informer-issue-78-october-1999_202408
all but missing issue 266

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I don't get it. Why the fuck did they destroy the website? Just achieve the website and keep the servers running.

Apparently Gamestop isn't doing much better.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/gamestop-q4-revenue-falls-2024-03-26/

"I suspect that they will keep trimming costs to generate breakeven or better, but it is inevitable that their sales will decline to an unsustainable level," Pachter said.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

You’d think GameStop would be doing better in recent years given places like Walmart and Best Buy stopped carrying as wide of a selection of games as in the past. Although stupid they don’t carry as wide of a selection as in the past either, and that was kind of the whole reason to go into a GameStop.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

We are living in a gaming journalism crash.

FTFY

Gaming journalism crisis is just a reflection of a more general gaming industry crisis. The same crisis that happened in the '80s, is happening now. The main difference is that in the '80s the crisis was sharp, while now it is a continuous condition. People didn't even realize that it started a least 10 years ago, hidden under the concurrent rise of indie games.

And no, this crisis is not caused by the woke surge, that is just the cherry on top.

 

[ind33d]

PC Gamer and Edge Magazine (both owned by Future Publishing) seem to be the last major print magazines standing. How much longer will they survive?

Print is kind of pointless these days - all the info they used to deseminate is now available much quicker and for free on the web.

they have to pivot to hobbyists, like people who mod Krystal fleshlights into their Steam Deck

 

[Unkillable Cat]

https://archive.org/details/game-informer-issue-78-october-1999_202408
all but missing issue 266

This is an 'updated' version of the torrent I mentioned earlier. It includes all the contents of said torrent (issues 1-260) plus the mags that came after that, except those are in disgusting PDF-format.

 

[Lucumo]

It includes all the contents of said torrent (issues 1-260) plus the mags that came after that, except those are in disgusting PDF-format.

What's wrong with .pdf files?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

What's wrong with .pdf files?

It's so easy to sneak malicious code into them that can hurt your system if executed, and they're almost always in a lower resolution when compared to properly done page scans.

I'll admit that .pdf files tend to have two major advantages though: OCR (that allows for semi-decent text search) and hyperlinks. I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to (video game) magazine scans, but I understand people who prefer the text search.

 

[Lucumo]

What's wrong with .pdf files?

It's so easy to sneak malicious code into them that can hurt your system if executed, and they're almost always in a lower resolution when compared to properly done page scans.

I'll admit that .pdf files tend to have two major advantages though: OCR (that allows for semi-decent text search) and hyperlinks. I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to (video game) magazine scans, but I understand people who prefer the text search.

What alternative(s) do you prefer then? For old gaming magazines, I don't care about OCR or hyperlinks. It's simply that the pdf-format is the standard and it's what you will find basically everywhere.