Games mags have a tough time of it

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 7th January 2009

Magazines? P'ah! The future is online! The future is bit-tech.net! The future is cheesecake!

Call us smug, but we always kind of knew that the internet was the way forward for most forms of media and journalism - and that's a fact which is being highlighted by the recent closure and sale of several fairly big games magazines today.

The big news for games fans today is the US magazine partnered with gaming website 1-Up.com, Electronic Games Monthly, has been closed down today. The closure comes after long-running rumours that parent company Ziff Davis Media were looking to sell the 1-Up network were finally proved true. The Hearst Corporation, owners of UGO.com (among others) has bought the entire network.

Hearst's first move has been to streamline the online side of the network and to close the offline branch completely. In laymans terms that means Hearst has fired an awful lot of people from 1-Up.com and begun closing EGM according to Gamasutra. More than 30 staff and journalists are expected to go in the cull.

Thus the January 2009 issue of EGM will be the last one ever, according to leaked staff letter from Ziff Davis executives. So ends almost 20 years of magazine history.

At the same time though, Double Jump Books is also looking to sell off it's own leading games magazine Hardcore Gamer. What's interesting there though is that the sale is taking place on eBay. If you think you can do better than Ziff Davis Media at running a nationally distributed games magazine in the states then you can make a bid for it - the starting bid rests at $42,000.

Going to have a punt at Hardcore Gamer or are you busy crying over EGM? Let us know in the forums.