Culture A Deleted Game Informer Is Now Redirecting To GameStop’s Closure Statement

GameStop suddenly closed one of the most venerated outlets in video game journalism yesterday, laying off its entire staff with many being informed by a statement that appears to be written by AI.

While it is bad enough to lose your job, what the past and present writers found shortly after is that Game Informer is not just closed, but the entire website has been wiped from the internet. Not just the homepage, but every single historical link to any Game Informer story in decades now redirects to the AI “Goodbye” message.

As a writer, it’s hard to understand how devastating this is, as it’s one thing to lose your job, but to be unable to point to your past work as you try to move on elsewhere is horrible. Not to mention just the loss of thousands and thousands of great features over the years from a hugely important industry outlet. The only reason this makes sense is that GameStop is trying to cut…hosting costs for the URL? It’s a move that’s being describe by many as “evil.”



This affects not just the recently laid off employees, where the site and magazine had already been cut to the bone from layoffs before this. But now anyone who has ever written for Game Informer has seen those articles lost. There is likely no recourse for this through GameStop as they technically own that content and are unlikely to simply turn the lights back on out of the goodness of their hearts.



So, there is a movement underway to preserve what can be saved through internet archives and such, though it would be a massive project that would take ages to complete, given the volume of what we’re talking about here.

GameStop has still not issued a statement on Game Informer’s closure directly, again, only publishing a “goodbye” message with no rationale. I was able to easily recreate passages of this message in ChatGPT with a few uses of the prompt: “Write a sad goodbye message about the closure of video game magazine Game Informer after 33 years.”

• The Statement: “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.”
• ChatGPT: “With a heavy heart, we announce the closure of Game Informer after 33 remarkable years.”
• The Statement: “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.”
• ChatGPT: “Throughout the years, we have witnessed the evolution of the gaming industry, from the early days of 16-bit graphics to the stunning, immersive worlds of today.”
• The Statement: “While our presses may stop, the passion for gaming that we've cultivated together will continue to live on.”
• ChatGPT: “While Game Informer may be closing its doors, the memories and connections we have built will endure.”

If you keep telling it to modify it changes the words around but all the structure is the same. Gross. Running it through multiple AI detection sites, they also all conclude it’s AI generated.

The closure of Game Informer is bad enough but destroying 30+ years of history with the press of a single button is unconscionable, and redirecting to an apparently AI-generated statement is a metaphor for the state of the entire industry. I hope someone is held to account for this, but at this point, I just don’t see how.

I’ve reached out to GameStop and will update if I hear back.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulta...edirecting-to-gamestops-ai-written-statement/ (Archive)

 

[Barry Williams]

It hasn't been relevant since the days of demo disks freebie when you bought the shitty mag.

I don't think Game Informer came with demo discs. The bonus you got with a GI sub was 10% off all used merchandise at GameStop, I think with the exclusion of consoles. Both the official PlayStation and Xbox magazines came with monthly discs, however.

google my name and 1up.com

lmao is that a covert stab at Jeremy Parish

 

[frozen_runner]

GameStop suddenly closed one of the most venerated outlets in video game journalism yesterday,

Who the fuck actually believes this shit?!

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Nintendo Power of all things was surprisingly chill. They never lost their sense of humor and for a mag dedicated to pimping Nintendo products, their review board could be surprisingly critical.

The letters section would sometimes have letters about things like a guy dreaming of becoming homeless and spending his days playing the Wii in a diaper. Might have the issue laying around in a box somewhere. It was pretty funny.

 

[VeePeeN]

It's quite a shocker to read old archived games news from, say, 1998-2005, and realize how infested with politics and agenda it all became.

It's noticeable in media in general going back to the late 90s. It was a little more subtle back then, before Obamas first term when TPTB started rubbing their agenda in your face and it's just ratcheted up from there.

The last 10 years makes one highly sensitive to propaganda, and you pick up on all kinds of shit when you go back and watch older movies, series and even local news affiliate broadcasts.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Was there anything on there even worth preserving?

A game that failed to load, bricked your console or PC and set your house on fire would be scored 7.5 out of 10

 

[A Pale Shadow]

The letters section would sometimes have letters about things like a guy dreaming of becoming homeless and spending his days playing the Wii in a diaper. Might have the issue laying around in a box somewhere. It was pretty funny.

During the era I had a subscription the guy(s) they had writing the letters section had this weird fixation on Mr.T and would constantly drop references to him. At one point they got a letter telling them that the Mr.T jokes were stale and they just needed to stop. It was the last letter on the page. You turn it, and the next page had a big photo of Mr. T.

 

[Shroom King]

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Holy shit, imagine being such a shit company that you make Bob Chipman look like a champion of the working class. Hell has frozen over.

 

[The Taco Santo!]

If a bunch of games 'journos' were too dumb to keep copies of their articles and have to struggle to find work as a result I can't say that I really care.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

Did any of them actually complain about this, or just MovieBob?

Cause it makes me think MovieBob doesn't keep copies of his shit if it's just him lol

 

[Cowboy Christ]

Makes me realise how many gaming mags I had while growing up but never subscribed to them, so we'd always go out to find them in the magazine isle.
Delivering them straight to your house seemed like the death of adventure.

Never read GameInformer (what a shit name lol) but I saw one guy backed up his articles when it closed. The rest of them? Seemingly never predicted this.
So it sounds like only one dude in GI entire three decade existence actually thought about this.

 

[SBG]

People can say they should have kept their own copies of their work or used archiving sites, but that kills what little prestige (lol) they get from being up on the site in the first place. And it's not like they were very good writers to begin with.

I imagine it helps to have people able to simply google their name and come up with articles they've written, so trying to refer them to some personal collection makes it seem like a bunch of meaningless bullshit which no one will care to slog through. With the site down, a chunk of their work history is now difficult to prove to people that don't already know them and who won't care to read whatever portfolio they come up with.

Shows how they aren't exactly business savvy enough to build up their own brands rather than just the sites'. They could've been working on tangential works like podcasts, youtube videos, or whatever else talking about games or whatever to make sure they'd have some recognizability and alternate revenue streams. Won't be surprised if they still land on their feet (at least some of them), but it'll solely be due to nepotism within the industry rather than talent.

 

[Staticness]

It had been declining for a while since transitioning to the net from traditional print.

But GG just shined a light on how truly BAD it had gotten and how FAST the 90's gamebro reporter had been hunted to extinction and replaced by a corporate-approved diversity-box-checker who was more interested in Hillary's run for the White House than if I should drop money on a given shooter game. (Spoiler: You shouldn't, they're problematic now)

And it arguably never recovered.

It's quite a shocker to read old archived games news from, say, 1998-2005, and realize how infested with politics and agenda it all became.

oldmanmurray would cause game journos to spontaneously combust.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Archive.org seems to have been crawling the site so most of it would be archived.

Game Informer was complete shit and this isn't exactly the gaming equivalent of the Library of Alexandria burning but how hard is it to just convert it to a static website and keep the links active? The Google ads would basically pay for the hosting and static pages require no maintenance.

Just sad the management cares so little that they'd rather redirect decades of articles to a badly written goodbye message than do the bare minimum to keep it accessible. People would volunteer to keep it up. They could export this shit and give it to Archive.org to make a proper collection, but they literally give zero fucks.

The main issue is value.

Video game "journalism" is extremely limited in how long it has value (if ever at all). But even if you treat it like not a meme - there's a very limited real time window where people care about what's in a gaming magazine. Pre-release for trailers/info/announcements and near/post-release for reviews and impressions. That's basically it. It never really found it's stride except for very niche circumstances (Nintendo Power being First Party meant they literally had the inside track on Nintendo Stuff as an example) but video game magazines could virtually never compete with other media. Even if you go pre-internet (because Magazines are monthly but even the most dogshit game has like 3 youtubers who upload daily about it) - they were still competing at a loss versus Word of Mouth, Newspapers, and Video Game Rental Stores.

So the actual content outside of very specific nostalgia - the content is really worthless. You'll never sit and wonder "I wonder what Borderlands 2 got as a review from GameInformer". It's like Political Humor - enough years have went by where if you watched a standup special lambasting Colin Powel you'd sit and think "who the fuck is this for?"?.

Additionally - it's unclear what the actual law is and what GameStop actually owns. They clearly own the articles but what about pictures of authors? Music that they made? People's likeness on the Youtube channel? The likeness of staff member's family on the Youtube channel (aka Dan Rykert's dad)? Did everyone sign really iron clad waivers?

So not only is the content worthless but it's an invitation for some kind of lawsuit or PR issue. Keeping it up is literally only downside.

I imagine there were non-journos on the staff that did things like sort through mail, clean up the office and take phone calls. It sucks that they lost their jobs. But fuck game journos. When they stopped being fun I stopped caring.

Probably not at the end. It's very likely they were on the most skeleton of crews and probably didn't even have a "real" office space. I'd be shocked if they didn't WFH during COVID and never went back like most places.

 

[MirrorNoir]

I loved Nintendo power. Never found out about it until it was over. I actually found a few copies at my grandmothers house. It was in a bin of old magazines my father got and kept. Only upside to hoarding.

Game Informer was cool for the artwork, and for knowing what major games were dropping. That's it. I have/had a subscription. Totally forgot about it. Came included with my Gay Stop power rewards membership I was required to have to purchase a PS5 back in 2022. I keep forgetting to cancel it. I tried to log into Game Informer but I remembered I have been unable to log into Game Informer since 2022. Something happened when I made my account. Looks like I won't be able to preserve it.

While the magazine is trash I would love to have it preserved just for preservation sake. My father likes to hoard physical stuff, while I do it in the digital realm.

Prior to it going from subscription only to new stand, Nintendo Power was God tier and issues from the first 5-6 years were coveted by me and my friends growing up. Sadly I slept way to late trying to get them, as Covid caused those older issues but especially the first three years to go to around $100 an issue now.

Sounds right, so the writing was on the wall. I did like getting a general gaming mag for free intermittently, there were some years a Gamestop card was worth it, other years not depending on what was new/trending. Occasionally the magazine had very good articles or let me know about games that weren't getting alot of press: Evolve, me & my friends' introduction to asymmetrical games, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 stood out as informative and interesting issues. I think Game Informer in general had a very different vibe than EGM, or PSM or NEXT(?) because it was tied to the resale store & unnecessary card, they knew they were disposable and could go at anytime. It was one of the least preachy mags because knew they were corporate bootlickers and their masters werent even high up the hierarchy as corporations go. Also I can't remember any of their writers being on the GameJournoPros mailing list for Zoe Quinn. Game Informer largely sidestepped the drama there.

Sad, but not enough to cry over.

At the height of Gamer gate they gave Anita a glowing feature length article where she and the magazine spewed all of the usual anti gamergate blood libel. They got so much hate mail about giving the con woman a platform and spewing her lies/backing her lies in print as gospel and cancellation notices from pissed the fuck subscribers, that they hard to run an editorial in the following issue where, while acknowledging the backlash and cancellations of subscriptions the anti-GG hit piece caused, double down on it saying Anita was doing the lords work and they felt it was the magazine's duty" to amplify her "message" to own the chuds....