Game Informer Closed Down by GameStop After 33 Years of Publication

The closure came without warning this past Friday.

There has always been something about video games and magazines that go so well together. As a kid, I would spend an inordinate amount of time pouring over copies of Nintendo Power and EGM just to stare at screenshots of upcoming games that I wanted to play. It's a special part of this wonderful pastime that today's generation of gamer isn't really able to experience. Now, there's one less video game magazine on the stands, as GameStop has shut down its in-house publication Game Informer after 33 years.

The news was originally broken via Game Informer's X account, which has already been removed. Here's a screen grab of the post before the account went defunct:

Traveling to the Game Informer website is similarly fruitless, as all of its content has been removed, replaced instead with this message:

Apparently, the Game Informer staff had no idea that GameStop was going to be closing them down. According to a GamesIndustry.biz report, the staff was about 70% done with the next issue when a meeting was called this past Friday, August 2. The staff was told that Game Informer was shutting down, effective immediately, and that severance packages would be distributed accordingly. Staffers didn't even get a chance to back up their writing, because as noted above, all of their work has been unceremoniously removed from the website.

Such a sad, unceremonious end for a magazine that has been around for over three decades. What began as an in-house publication for FuncoLand (if you've lived in the Bay Area as long as I have, you might remember seeing Funco in Southland, back in the day) eventually became GameStop's when the retailer purchased its competitor back in 2000. The magazine would go on to become a staple of the GameStop PowerUp Rewards membership pitch, as it was included for years as a way of sweetening the deal for subscribers. Now, Game Informer is just another piece of video game history trivia to tell your kids about. We wish the best to the magazine's staffers as we remember better days gone by in the industry.

Source: Game Informer Website