Computer Games Magazine and its sister publication Massive Magazine were ended yesterday. While the Internet is kicking a lot of print magazines ass, that’s not the case here. Long story short: CGMs parent company, The Globe, got hit with a summary judgement as a result of MySpace suing them for spamming their customers. Rumors are the judgement is between $40-120 million. As a result, The Globe shut down damn near everything, including CGM.
It’s a shame. In addition to writing for them I always enjoyed the magazine. Steve Bauman, the EIC, may well be the hardest working man in the print business. I believe CGM had more edit pages than PC Gamer and put the magazine out with just two people, and the other person, Cindy Yans, left to freelance so Steve and the freelancers were it.
The truly sad part of the tale is it is not due to failing subscribers, the internet, or anything Steve had any control over. Just a messed up parent corporation that he is paying the price for their stupidity. What’s worse that stupidity isn’t even justifiable. I could see it if they expanded into a market that was a bad idea, but they were just fucking spammers.
Mark Crump 