After 33 Years, GameStop Shuts Down And Disappears ‘Game Informer’
from the poof-it's-gone dept
Well this is a real punch in the gut. For years, we have been talking about a strange lack of interest within the video game industry when it comes to game preservation. In far, far too many cases, both single player and multiplayer video games that rely on backend checks to start the game, or online servers on which to play them, or games being available in digital storefronts essentially disappear at the whim of game publishers’ desire to keep them available. Never mind that this can mean that games people purchased become unavailable to them. Never mind that these publishers could make their games’ source code available so that fans could keep them running. It all just goes away without recourse for the public, due to the fact that these games remain protected by copyright, despite their being unavailable to the public, thereby breaking the supposed copyright contract. It’s a massive problem if you care about the preservation of culture.
But surely when it comes to something like journalism surrounding the games industry the thinking would be different… right? Nobody is going to let decades of journalistic output just suddenly get disappeared out of nowhere… right?
When it comes to Game Informer, the GameStop owned video game magazine that has been in production for over three decades, that’s exactly what just happened.
Staff at the magazine, which also publishes a website, weekly podcast, and online video documentaries about game studios and developers, were all called into a meeting on Friday with parent company GameStop’s VP of HR. In it they were told the publication was closing immediately, they were all laid off, and would begin receiving severance terms. At least one staffer was in the middle of a work trip when the team was told.
The sudden closure of Game Informer means that issue number 367, the outlet’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard cover story, will be its last. The entire website has been taken offline as well.
This isn’t link rot. It’s link decapitation. Every single URL from the Game Informer website now points only to the main site URL, with the following message posted on it.
After 33 thrilling years of bringing you the latest news, reviews, and insights from the ever-evolving world of gaming, it is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Game Informer.
From the early days of pixelated adventures to today’s immersive virtual realms, we’ve been honored to share this incredible journey with you, our loyal readers. While our presses may stop, the passion for gaming that we’ve cultivated together will continue to live on.
Thank you for being part of our epic quest, and may your own gaming adventures never end.
Barring anyone with physical copies of the magazine, or those that created their own online scans of those magazines, or whatever you can still get out of the Internet Archive, it’s all just gone. Thousands of articles and features, millions of words of journalistic output, simply erased. Even the ExTwitter account for the publication has been disappeared, even after it was used to post the same message as on the website. What you will see if you go that link for the disappeared tweet is an outpouring of sadness from all sorts of folks, including famed voice actors, content creators like Mega Ran, and even game studios, all eulogizing the beloved magazine.
And it seems that this shut down, almost certainly at the hands of CEO Ryan Cohen, occurred without any opportunity for those who produced all of this content to take backups for archive purposes.
This comes as GameStop is experiencing two things. First, the decline of physical game sales that has cut deeply into GameStop’s business. Second, the massive infusion of cash the company has on hand as a result of the memestock fin-bro infatuation with the company’s stock. In other words, the company has a massive problem on its hands… but that problem is not immediate. There were ways to do this that didn’t result in the effacement of decades of cultural content that is, of course, all still protected under copyright law, limiting the public’s ability to mitigate any of this.
And, because cultural disasters like this tend to be sprinkled with at least a dash of irony:
A recent in-depth feature on the retro game studio Digital Eclipse about gaming’s history and preservation is one of the stories that is no longer accessible. A write-up about Game Informer’s famous game vault, containing releases from across its decades long history, is also inaccessible.
So a gaming journalism outfit failed to preserve its own features on game preservation. That would actually be funny if it weren’t so infuriating.
Filed Under: archives, game informer, journalism, preservation
Companies: gamestop
Comments on “After 33 Years, GameStop Shuts Down And Disappears ‘Game Informer’”
“GameStop” was a threat all along.
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It’s what your mom yelled when she caught you staying up at 1 AM playing Metroid and Legend of Zelda before she picked up the Nintendo and threw it against a wall.
Corporations are evil. End of the story.
Copyright infringers: The modern day preservationists
Another fine example of how if modern culture is to be preserved it will be because of copyright infringement, not in spite of it.
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Copyright hoarding.
How dare people want to preserve our own history.
So what are they offering those who paid for membership cards including GameInformer subscriptions to replace what they just stole?
This sucks, and it might be callous to say, but it seems like in 2024 if I’m a writer and I’m not saving personal copies of all of my work, it’s on me if it all gets lost.
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I thought all writers did. I certainly did back when I was a minor participant in the industry. I still have everything, not that anyone would be interested.
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You mean personal local copies, I guess.
As the website has been virtually shutdown, all cloud accounts could have also been closed.
People tend to forget that remote disk space owned by a company is not a safe place to put data (not even for privacy reason).
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Or, at least, personal copies not dependent on the continued existence of one’s employer, and one’s continued employment there. If those writers had copies in personal Google Drive accounts, the copies would likely be fine: Google sometimes arbitrarily cancels accounts (so, better have more than one “cloud” service), but has not yet decided to shut down that service entirely.
It’d good general advice to avoid becoming too dependent on an employer. Like, if you get employee stock options, it’s often suggested to sell those as soon as possible, so that if the company goes under you don’t lose your job and your money. And if your future employment depends on a good personal portfolio, don’t use one that’ll disappear at the exact moment you’re laid off. (Hint: archive.org will take this stuff.)
GameStop had a copy of every game it reviewed .it’s a shame all the articles and videos it made are gone with no chance for writers to backup articles this is a real loss to culture big companys do not care about the value of writing and culture of preserving archives and material when they shut down a website with no warning
Maybe they could sell off the games archive to a nonprofit organization
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We don’t know that they’re gone; only unavailable. And the writers had 33 years to back up the articles. To the extent it’s their job to know where the industry’s going, neither “another game magazine shuts down” nor “a web site disappears without warning” would’ve been difficult to predict.
(Web sites disappear all the time without adequate warning. It sucks, but there are basically no negative consequences to the people shutting this stuff down.)
Between CNET and this, that “The Sky Is Rising” report earlier this year continues to look more and more stupid by the day. I thought that the money in digital publishing and magazines showed that the industry was healthy? I guess it’s only healthy for the people at the top…
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Errr what?
That report is about the entertainment industry as a whole. So unless you are saying CNET and or gamestop is a major portion of the “reading” section of the report[0], the fact that two individual members of industry are decreasing is not very representative.
[0] A claim that, if made, would seem extermly dubious
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There have been mass layoffs, closings, and more across all of the entertainment industry. This was happening in 2023 when report was being written up as well as in these months afterward.
The report talking about how the Internet has driven the entertainment industry to “new heights” and showing graphs where line go up for various parts of the industry, and then looking at the reality where, just looking at the “reading section”, publications are being squeezed and killed off or sold by incompetent greedy brunchlords? It’s as hilarious as it is depressing. “New heights” of greed and corruption is where the Internet drove the entertainment industry.
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Those heights were always going to happen as an inherent part of how businesses and business leaders function. The brunchlords were always going to brunchlord regardless of whether the Internet existed.
You might argue that the Internet made it possible for them to do more damage, and you might have a point – but the idea that the Internet is solely responsible sounds like you’re blaming the Internet more for the shitty brunchlord behavior than the brunchlords themselves.
Preservationist "whistleblowers"?
Seems like we might need to come up with a term for people who in the future start exfiltrating copies of their employer’s data for future historical/archival purposes, as opposed to for personal gain.
Robin Hood Archivists?
Squirrel Librarians?
Any other terminology ideas?
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The term “guerrilla archivist” has sometimes been used, though it’s more general. Already, these people are the only reason we have certain data.
I can understand not wanting to personally pay for the preservation of something, but at least give other people enough of a chance to preserve the stuff they want to before you pull the plug. While reading this article, for example, I was listening to music written by someone long dead. His death was already a tremendous loss; trying to get rid of all his music afterwards would simply have been unconscionable in my eyes.
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Well, not only can they not be arsed,someone else could potentially make money on their abandoned property, or at least enjoy it without paying rent. But that would be unconscionable.
Unlike blowing into a company long after its founding and growth, whether it is currently successful or not, and dismantling and destroying it from the inside (maybe after some growth by acquisition!) so like 5 bros walk away with truckloads of cash and fuck everyone else. That’s totally cool and The American Way.
GameStop has no regard for history, which is stupid and short-sighted, because retro game enthusiasts are a growing and dedicated segment of the used games market.
EB Games used to carry 8- and 16-bit stuff. One of the first things GameStop did after buying them out was get rid of all that and focus on then-current-gen games.
GameStop’s best hope for survival at this point is to pivot from being the tough-sell retailer of barely-reduced-cost used games for current or recent consoles to a source for collectors and retro enthusiasts. This move shows how little interest they have in respecting gaming history.
If it was so important to you, why weren’t you hosting all this content at your own expense?
Why do you think a private company should serve as your personal archive?
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First, hosting all the content at your own expense won’t prevent Gamestop from suing you for copyright infringment. Second, this is historical and cultural content that belongs to society and should collectively be preserved. Why do you think a private company should be able to memory hole culture just because it’s not currently profitable?
Thank fuck for that. Shame about the valuable content, though. Hopefully, someone on their end signed up to Internet archival services/didn’t set up robots.txt to prevent archiving.
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Where’d the [autism-phobic] thing come about? If anything, looking at the Wall Street Bets crowd, they’ve been embracing autism like it’s going out of style.
Maybe redditors should have invested more into Gamestop to prevent this.
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What makes you think it wouldn’t have happened anyways?
So sad
Sadly they are out of the game and maybe if they had financial issues, they are joining at trying to make ends meet and they probably have back ups somewhere and isn’t the company, although non existent, obligated to keep good on subscription L’s or repayment? Refunded or what have you?