1up.com posts

It's looking like the video game mail order rental service GameFly is looking to the future and expanding into more and more areas. Earlier this year the company made the surprise announcement that they were acquiring the popular gaming news web site Shacknews and its associated file download site Fileshack. Now Shacknews is reporting that GameFly has recruited now former 1Up.com editor Garnett Lee to become GameFly's new editorial director.

Lee will supervise all of GameFly's editorial based web sites including Shacknews, FileShack and a number of other sites that GameFly has either acquired or launched on their own. That includes their casual gaming cite Ponged, their game cheat code site Cheat Freak and their social gaming answer site Gameanswers.com. Lee will write a weekly column for Shacknews and also develop a new podcast.

Ziff Davis' final vestige of its game business is about to close its doors. FileFront, the popular game file download web site, has posted up word that it will shut down operations as of March 30. In a farewell message, the site blamed the "current economic conditions" as the reason for their shutdown.

Just a few years ago, Ziff Davis was one of the biggest companies in the US in terms of covering the game industry with several print magazines along with their 1Up.com game web site network. However the company hit a number of financial issues even before the current recession began and it declared bankruptcy in early 2008. It began shutting down its game magazines at first. In early January, Ziff Davis sold most of its 1Up.com web sites to the Hearst Corporation and its UGO subsidiary. FileFront, however, was not part of the UGO sale. It was kept by Ziff Davis with an internal memo saying the company "will determine the best ways to leverage the scale and functionality of this digital property to expand our business position." Apparently they were not able to do what they had planned.

So why is Electronic Gaming Monthly, perhaps the most well known of the multi-platform game magazines, coming to an end? It's not its publisher Ziff Davis' fault nor is it the fault of UGO who bought Ziff Davis' 1Up.com network of sites but not EGM. No, the reason for the magazine's demise is..the game industry itself.

At least that's the reasoning of 1Up.com editoral director Sam Kennedy who told MTV Multiplayer's blog site, "The same companies begging for a cover of EGM - and [that] would love it when they got an article in it - were the same companies pulling advertising from the magazines."

Of course this begs the question of how long the other gaming magazines will last. Game Informer, the in-house mag of the Gamestop retail chain, would seem to be the safest bet for survival. However what is the fate of IDG's Gamepro or Future's PC Gamer and all of its official console magazines? 2009 may see one or more of these publications go the way of EGM, especially in this economy.

Even though rumors of the deal started weeks ago, the news that the 1Up.com gaming web site network from Ziff Davis was being sold to UGO hit the Internet like a freight train wreck Monday night. It got worse when news leaked out that a large number of the 1Up.com team had been laid off as a result. Today the wreckage was still being picked through on the Internet.

Former Ziff Davis employee (and former Games for Windows-Computer Gaming World magazine editor) Jeff Green got upset by some statements made by 1Up.com editorial director Sam Kennedy in his official statement on the deal. On his personal blog Green states, "You're not the same 1UP because you just lost a gigantic chunk of what made 1up 1up. It may go on, it may in fact produce great things, but it won't be the same. All that a company ever is is a mix of specific personalities. That's all it is. Period. When you remove people, it may go on, but it's never "the same." Saying it's the same is a disservice to all the people who just got canned."

Meanwhile Kennedy made an unofficial statement to the NEOGaf message board, admitting, " 1UP was a business that was losing money." He added, "But the reality of the market was that no company, including UGO, was willing to sustain 1UP as it was. And that includes Ziff Davis. I hate to to break it to you, but the sad fact was that there was little hope for 1UP to continue as it had been." Kennedy also expressed hope that some of the site's features, including the 1up.com, might continue in some form. He states, "I'm not saying everything will be back to "normal" as you knew it anytime soon, but I am saying there should be some good things to look forward to in the future."

Update: In a new chat with MTV Multiplayer, UGO's CEO J Moses defended his company's handling of the 1Up.com purchase, saying, "We have just hired 24 people At a time where all you read about is layoffs we have expanded UGO by 33 percent."

Last month the rumor mill started circulating that Ziff Davis was going to sell off its 1Up.com network of gaming web sites to UGO (owned by the Hearst Corporation), Well, 1Up.com has now made that deal official; the web site has announced that UGO has bought the main site along with GameVideos.com, MyCheats.com and GameTab.com. Specific financial terms were not disclosed. Another 1Up.com site, Filefront.com, is not included in the purchase. According to an internal Ziff Davis email posted at Gamasutra, Filefront will continue on Ziff Davis' PCMag network of sites.

Also not part of the purchase is Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine, the multi-platform gaming mag that has been in existence since 1989. Again the internal email stated, "With demand for print continuing to decline amongst both advertisers and readers and the content being produced by 1UP no longer available for use in the publication, it simply did not make sense for us to move forward with this business any longer." The January 2009 dated issue which was sent out in December will be the final issue. There's no word yet on how subscribers to the magazine will be compensated.

Update: Our sister site Joystiq is reporting that quite a number of 1Up.com's staff have been laid off as a result of the purchase by UGO. Our thoughts go out to all of the staff affected by this move.

We've already reported on Ziff Davis' issues with its Game Group properties in the past, including the possiblity of shutting down their print magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. Now our sister site Joystiq is reporting through unnamed sources that the UGO web site network is in "very advanced talks" to purchase several of Ziff Davis' web sites including their flagship site 1Up.com.

Other sites that could be bought by UGO include GameVideos.com and MyCheats.com. Oddly, FileFront.com is apparently not involved in the UGO takeover talks. UGO also has no interest in buying EGM, according to the story. There's no word on how much money Ziff Davis is asking for its gaming web sites.

Stop whatever you're doing (unless all you're doing is breathing) and go read this 1UP Starcraft 2 preview where EGM Editor-in-Cheif James "Milky" Mielke and 1UP's PC Games editor-in-chief Jeff Green face off in seven matches over the course of several hours. That's right, these guys spent six hours playing a game that most of us haven't even spent a minute playing. Lucky doesn't even begin to describe it.

Thankfully, they went ahead and produced four pages of gold for everyone to read. Everything from Jeff's sad seven losses in a row to discussions of what they think about all the new changes, additions and subtractions from the game. It's all worth reading so sit down, strap in and get your flamethrowers ready: the zerg rush of information is about to begin.