EGM, R.I.P.

Yesterday, Hearst Media–owners of the UGO media sites–ate and devoured Ziff Davis, owners of 1up.com and Electronic Gaming Monthly. Well, almost; since UGO swallowed 1up whole and spit out EGM entirely, meaning the long-running magazine’s current issue will be it’s last. Furthermore, most of the current EGM and 1up staff were shitcanned seemingly minutes after the announcement, which sucks–I’ve met several of them over the years, and they were all quite cool.

I was never that big a fan of 1up, but man, Electronic Gaming Monthly was an awesome magazine for an incredibly long time. As someone who ran a mag tied to one specific hobby, I know how tough it can be to figure out month after month of interesting feature stories on what is essentially the same topic, but EGM seemed to do it with ease. The magazine had a pitch-perfect balance of information and fun, and it always looked outstanding. It wasn’t afraid to make fun of itself. The fact that it did all of these things for so long was frankly phenomenal.

The end was obviously nigh, because gamers uniformly want to see games in action rather than screenshots or descriptive text. But that shouldn’t and doesn’t take away from EGM‘s near 20 years of being essential and awesome, and one of the best hobby mags ever. An end of an era indeed. (Via Kotaku)