When Game Informer shut down last year, after three decades of consistent video game coverage that shaped and influenced what games media would later become, with it went thousands of articles and all its staff. Decades of video game history was no longer easily accessible, and one of the most reliable sources of extensive coverage on new releases disappeared.
It was a massive loss not just to the media industry, but to gamers everywhere who had their love for gaming fostered through GI’s magazines. It wasn’t just a bummer, it was an indicator of how bad things were getting.
And yet somehow, against all odds, it’s back. In a post on the Game Informer website, editor-in-chief Matt Miller announced that Game Informer had been purchased and revived, bringing not just its back catalog and regular coverage back, but its entire team.
Game Informer’s New Owner Loves The Blockchain
We can thank Gunzilla, who purchased Game Informer, for this comeback. Gunzilla Games reached out to Game Informer, secured the rights, and according to Miller, “insisted on the idea of Game Informer remaining an independent editorial outlet… without any influence from them or anyone else”.
Gunzilla is a game developer co-founded by former fintech entrepreneur Vlad Korolov, former Warface lead Alex Zoll, and filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, who made the Oscar-nominated District 9. Gunzilla is currently developing “the world’s most unhinged battle royale”, Off The Grid, which seemingly melds both PvP multiplayer play and a 60 hour PvE narrative campaign.
What isn’t easily found on the game’s website is that it has an NFT marketplace. Its FAQ clarifies that NFTs are “optional” and that the game is entirely playable without it. Gunzilla is also funded partly by cryptocurrency, and has simultaneously developed GUNZ, a “blockchain-based digital economy platform built… to empower players with full ownership of in-game items as tradable NFTs on an on-chain marketplace and mobile apps”. The same statement has a quote from one of its investors saying, “Off The Grid is poised to cross over into the traditional gaming world, bringing the joys of Web3 gaming to the masses.”
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How Long Will This Last?
Look, it’s not ideal. I’m obviously hard-pressed to see this as entirely good news, even if Miller insists that Gunzilla wants them to maintain editorial independence. NFT games notoriously do very badly, because everybody hates them, and even putting that aside, a battle royale breaking into an already oversaturated multiplayer space is a big ask. If Gunzilla burns through all their venture capital money, what then? Does Game Informer get sold again? Does it close?
As you likely well know, games media has been in a tailspin for the last few years. Media at large is dying. Huge websites, former mainstays of the internet, get shut down and zombified all the time. There are constant layoffs. Game Informer was just one of many websites that was shut down, and yet, defying the odds, it managed to come back, with its original team no less. This was, quite frankly, unthinkable until it somehow pulled it off.
I wish the team all the best, and I hope it lasts. But man, Gunzilla is sus, right?
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