Goodbye, Game Informer
It’s the end of an era — again.
One of the last major monthly gaming magazines, Game Informer, is officially shutting down. In fact, it’s already shut down. The doors are closed, the employees are laid off, and GameStop is the one that put the final nail in the coffin. Largely without employees being told ahead of time, which is f***** up on so many levels.
This article isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis of the situation, or an uninformed opinion of what could have been done to save the company, or a commentary on how GameStop is continuing to nosedive into the ground and unfortunately took Game Informer with it. Instead, this is me sharing what Game Informer meant to me and what I think that it means to an entire generation of gamers that are out there today. Because without Game Informer, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now — sitting here, talking about video games on the internet.
When I was growing up in the early 2000s, social media platforms literally weren’t a thing. Sure, you had online websites and forums where people would get together and talk about video games. But if you wanted researched and polished news and updates on upcoming games, new consoles, or the biggest E3 announcements, magazines were the way to go. At least, they were for me.
You had Game Pro, Electronic Gaming Monthly, The Official PlayStation Magazine, Nintendo Power. Any time my mom would go to the grocery store, I’d beeline over to the magazine section and see if they had the latest editions of any of these magazines. While she was shopping, I’d thumb through the latest magazine, taking in the screenshots and reading first impressions of games that I wouldn’t even be able to play for months. My parents didn’t have a cable package that included stations like TechTV (which would become G4), and didn’t even upgrade to high-speed internet until I convinced them to let me play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on my PlayStation 3 in 2008. These magazines were my lifeline to the heartbeat of the gaming industry. As great as it was reading those magazines while my mom shopped, nothing was as good as opening the mailbox and seeing a fresh Game Informer.
It didn’t matter if I was at the beach on vacation, poolside with my family during the summer, or just hanging out in my bedroom, the latest Game Informer was never too far away. They felt like monthly letters from the frontlines, written by these people known as “gaming journalists” that would cover the latest and greatest from industry events, go hands-on with some of the biggest games of the year, and share sneak peeks at new consoles. The thought of being one of those people was amazing; to be invited by a company to try a game early and share coverage with the world sounded too good to be true — but after years of reading stellar coverage from Game Informer, and eventually seeing people like Adam Sessler, Blair Hurter, and Morgan Webb on G4, I really felt like that could be my calling — I wanted to be a gaming journalist like these people that I’d grown up reading.
So, I went for it. I started college as a Communications Major with a focus on Mass Media, minoring in Journalism. From day one, my goal was to get that degree, land a job at Game Informer, IGN, GameSpot — whoever would have me — and then totally uproot my life to make it happen. That’s around the time that I started taking this YouTube channel seriously, going through tons of rebrands and just putting myself out there to get comfortable on camera and build a name for myself. I learned how to shoot and edit, got a better idea of what did and didn’t work for my content styles, and slowly but surely started building an audience. All the while, even though the channel was growing by a few people here and there, the goal was still to make it big and get into the gaming journalism field like I’d always dreamed. And then reality set in.
Graduation was about a year away, and I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. It was either keep going after the dream, go into massive debt to make the leap toward what I’d always wanted to do, or play it safe, stay in my hometown — near my family — and keep pursuing that passion with my own content creation, while also living the “normal life.” I went with the latter, and I have no regrets. Obviously, I’ve built something awesome on YouTube and TikTok — but my dream of being a gaming journalist lives on through my channel and the content that I create today.
The thing that I always loved about Game Informer — other than the great work that they put out up until the very end — is that those are the people that made it. Those are the people that went all-in on the thing that they were passionate about the most. They put in the time to keep that magic of a print magazine alive, and simultaneously built up a stellar website and podcast presence. Beyond that, Alex Van Aken has led a huge video push that resulted in content that could rival the No Clip crew when it comes to documentary-style videos. No matter what you were reading or watching, no matter if you were on GameInformer.com or reading a print magazine, that team was putting out great content. But the writing had been on the wall for months.
Game Informer had recently relaunched a dedicated print subscription, starting at $19.91 per year during the launch window to pay homage to the magazine’s launch year. GameStop had cut the print copies for most subscribers a year or two earlier. Even though this felt like a potential redemption ark with Game Informer regaining control over their distribution, the social feeds had an underlying “impending doom” kind of feel. They’d been pushing this physical subscription a lot in the weeks after its release, and staff had been doing all that they could to get the word out there. I subscribed and don’t regret subscribing even now; $20 for physical copies and to support a team that put so much time into creating quality content was a no-brainer. Even so, the times have changed, and the quality writing and reporting at Game Informer became a relic of the past.
Gaming news websites have basically become a dumping ground for listicles, how-to guides, and content that farms SEO with the occasional piece of reporting sprinkled in. Reporters like Jason Schreier at Bloomberg and Stephen Totilo at Game File are doing some fantastic investigative work. The same could be said for some articles on IGN, GameSpot, Eurogamer — but social media is where the conversation is. X and Threads deliver the news, and then commentators (like me) talk about it on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. That’s the new cycle; that’s how people get their information. Podcasts like Kinda Funny Games Daily and IGN’s network of coverage also drive plenty of listens and keep people in the loop, but the days of relying on websites to keep people informed and drive clicks through quality written content are a thing of the past — let alone a print magazine that people only get once per month.
All of this is to say that the end of Game Informer marks the end of an era. Just like the Electronic Entertainment Expo officially calling it quits earlier this year, or G4 shutting down, coming back, and shutting down again, I feel like we’re watching the things that made so many of us fall in love with gaming disappear — all while we try to hang on to a little piece of the nostalgia of cracking open a Game Informer on a Saturday morning to read about a new game.
To the Game Informer staff, both that got let go this week and those that made the outlet what it was through the years, thank you for the memories. Reading those magazines built a love for gaming in me that will last a lifetime. Without you, I wouldn’t be who I am today — and I know I’m not alone in that.
