Game Informer Magazine shut down by GameStop after 33 years
The end of major video game magazines published from the US
📰 Game Informer magazine shut down and its staff was laid off
🛑 GameStop, its owner, gave no official reason for the closure
🦔 Started in 1991, its first issue featured a Sega Genesis-era Sonic
👴 The 33-year-old magazine was among the last out of the US
👀 You can still read Edge, PC Gamer, and Nintendo Force in print
I still have a lot of old video game magazines in my possession and until Friday, I could say most but not all of them have ceased publication. Now… all of them have closed.
Game Informer, the 33-year-old video game magazine that is among the last of its kind, has been shut down by its owner, GameStop. And, with that, the magazine’s entire staff was laid off without notice.
History of Game Informer
Chances are, if you ever got lured into signing up for GameStop’s Power Up Rewards membership, you probably got print issues of Game Informer (it’s the one thing that made GameStop’s annual fee worth it). The magazine actually began as a media arm of Minneapolis-based retailer FuncoLand in 1991 with a Sega-Genesis-era Sonic the Hedgehog on the cover of its first issue.
The magazine survived several mergers and acquisitions that saw FuncoLand, Electronics Boutique (EB Games), and Software Etc/Babbage’s roll into one company that would dominate retail for new and used video games: GameStop.
Rival magazines that have come and gone include Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), EGM2/Expert Gamer, GamePro, GameFan, Nintendo Power, Official Xbox Magazine, Official PlayStation Magazine, GMR, Next-Generation, and Ultra Game Players.
You can still get print issues of PC Gamer and Edge from my former employer, UK publisher Future PLC. The only US-based video game magazine I can find is Nintendo Fan, which is about 11 years old and rose from the ashes of Nintendo Power.
What remains of Game Informer
The Game Informer content is now offline with a short “the final boss level” message that doesn’t seem fitting for the magazine’s 33-year run. You can still access much of the content through the Wayback Machine.
On X, we get more insight into how close Game Informer was to having one more final issue from now-former Magazine Content Director Kyle Hillard, who said, “We were about 70% done with the next issue and it was going to have a GREAT cover.”
Regarding whether or not that almost-complete Game Informer issue would see the light of day, Hilliard simply commented: “Sadly, this is completely out of our hands. Every question we asked this morning was met with 🤷♀️.”
Throwback: Kyle Hillard wrote for my first video game website Gaming Target back in 2010 and 2011. Hillard, like the rest of the Game Informer team, is now looking for new work after a decade of writing for the last major video game out of the US.
Gone are the days when you could expect major video game hardware and software reveals as cover stories from a monthly magazine. Publishers have opted for showing game trailers at The Game Awards or simply publishing blog posts on their own websites – especially likes of from Sony. Its PS5 Pro this fall and rumored PSP 2 handheld in 2025 may get the same treatment, which allows for a tightly controlled message with no editorial input whatsoever. That, along with the layoffs, is the biggest gut punch of Game Informer’s closure.