After murmurs began to fill the air about a round of layoffs hitting the worlds largest gaming magazine, Game Informer, it has been now confirmed by many former employees that Game Informer has been hit with a significant amount of layoffs.
Known as one of the largest magazines in the world, Game Informer has been the place to go for gaming related news and tech items for quite some time. Over the past few years, the company has restructured, rebuilt their website, and even brought on new talent to help bring in a breath of fresh air to their content.
However, it seems things may not be going as smoothly as the company intended as they’ve been hit with a significant amount of layoffs including senior associate editor Kyle Hilliard, west coast news editor, Imran Khan, Managing Editor, Matt Bertz, and associate editor Suriel Vazquest who all took to Twitter today to confirm that they were affected by the layoffs.
At the time of writing, Game Informer’s editor-in-chief, Andy McNamara, has not been affected, stating on his official Twitter, “I appreciate all the love. I see it. I feel it. I am trying to get things right with my people. I love Game Informer, its people, and its readers more than any corporation could, and I will address all the issues when I can, but for now, I need to focus on my GI family.”
While it’s unclear how many more employees have been hit, the website had 19 staffers, and it seems we have no idea how many more will be affected in the upcoming days. While GameStop, the parent company of Game Informer, has struggled in recent years, their magazine remains a strong one in the gaming press, averaging 6.6 million paid subscribers, including a 2.1 million paid digital subscribers, which is enough to set it at the top as the fifth largest customer-used publication in the states.
Unfortunately, GameStop has been working hard to cut their spending, recently closing down their Australian branch back in April despite their Australian editor, David Milner, claiming that readership was up over 19% year-over-year. This could also mean, however, with the rise of adblockers that they weren’t suffering from a dip in ad-based revenue, which has even affected us here at Blast Away the Game Review in recent days.
As we are sure to hear more numbers being released regarding lay-offs, it only seems that GameStop could be coming to an end of their laying off employees in an effort to restructure their company at this time. These rounds of layoffs only follow ones that occurred a few weeks ago affecting and now the latest batch. You can read the official statement from GameStop provided to IGN down below:
“As part of the previously announced GameStop Reboot initiative to transform our business for the future and improve our financial performance, we can confirm a workforce reduction was implemented impacting more than 120 corporate staff positions, representing approximately 14% of our total associate base at our company headquarters as well as at some other offices.
While these changes are difficult, they were necessary to reduce costs and better align the organization with our efforts to optimize the business to meet our future objectives and success factors. We recognize that this is a difficult day for our company and particularly for those associates impacted. We appreciate their dedication and service to GameStop and are committed to supporting them during this time of transition.”
Our thoughts go to those affected by the layoffs in hopes they can recover swiftly.
About the Writer:
Dustin is our native console gamer, PlayStation and Nintendo reviewer who has an appetite for anything that crosses the borders from across the big pond. His interest in JRPG’s, Anime, Handheld Gaming, and Pizza is insatiable. His elitist attitude gives him direction, want, and a need for the hardest difficulties in games, which is fun to watch, and hilarity at its finest. You can find him over on Twitter or Facebook.