Ziff Davis Sells 1UP To UGO/Hearst, Closes EGM

[Richard Hammond]

1up show and 1up yours gone :(

Ive been watching 1up podcast since the 1st episode and 1up yours for a year now, i love Garnett, Shane, John Davison etc..

I am so gutted for everyone who lost there jobs in this, hopefully someone who has a clue will snap them up in a jiffy then we can have the "Game Over, Continue?" podcast.

Was just looking at Matt Chandronait twitter and he posted

There are opportunities to be had. Fear not, the minds around me began hatching plans within minutes of impact. about 4 hours ago from web

Hopefully all the ones that were fired will start their own website.

Edited January 7, 2009 by Richard Hammond

[Minifig]

What I want to know is whats going to happen to 1up.com ?

Are the forums going to disappear?

[SierraSonic]

Noooo! >.< This kills the ONLY gamer magazine I used. >.<

[Guest]

I can see a new startup emerging from this. Perhaps it's a blessing in disguise? Only time will tell.

[WelshBluebird]

Why the hell would they can the podcast? I'm sure that must give them a crap load of traffic to the site? I first went to 1UP after hearing it on the podcast (which I had found on itunes).

Gutted so many awesome writers are going too. Although its not very surprising. Look at how many people have left there in the past year or so, along with the closure of the GFW mag. The writing was on the fall I'm afraid.

edit. Looks like the podcast will still live. Garnett put up a twitter post saying "to all the awesome tweets for us, thank you more than I can say, and yes, there will be future confirmation of weekends". Not gonna be the same without the usual crew though.

[Remysaus]

it's a shame, always first went to 1up for reviews on new games before going to the other sites. they will be missed :(

[Guest]

Regarding 1UP Yours:

The combination of CES and Vegas always creates a maelstrom, and I knew going in this year that going solo to cover it for us would multiply the effect. But I never guessed I'd be headed there on the first day after a UGO buyout of 1UP and its subsequent substantial layoffs. I can't attest to how it is in other industries, but the videogame business community really proves itself a real community at times like this. Everyone -- fans, peers from all around both videogame and technology journalism, and all the people at the publishing partners we work with -- showed so much genuine love and concern for us. That tremendously helped to handle a very difficult situation.

About that situation, I've received hundreds of questions about what's going to happen to 1UP Yours. The short answer is I don't know. For the long answer I'll do my best to make sense of such an indistinct answer. When I twittered "well, it really was a lovely holiday 1UP Yours special I think. By my count that was episode #163 Hey, that's a prime number. Nice way to go" it was my emotional response to hearing all the people we'd lost. In particular, losing Andrew dealt a heavy blow. While he's been away the past few months I've been back to producing the show. Even with a full staff doing that created a substantial weekly time management challenge for me. And then there's the matter of having to rebuild the show cast again. Yeah, we've done that several times before, but Andrew was such an important part of getting it right. He was the sounding board for working things out, and always was really in tune with how this personality or that would fit into the new mix.

So that's why I don't know whether 1UP Yours will continue. Well, that and the obvious part about not knowing who would fill Shane's spot on the show and that being a much more difficult question in light of our staff reduction.

Now while I'm not sure what it will be, on the underlying question of whether there will be a show I'm more comfortable telling you yes, there will be one. Really, that's what I do. Sure, I enjoy doing written content, but I think -- and judging by the audience response so do a lot of you out there -- that I do my best work on video and audio shows. I can also tell you that one of the UGO editorial execs who was in the office for the transition told me he was a huge fan of Yours.

That leads me to believe that some sort of show will figure into the mix as we design the editorial package at 1UP. UGO has said to us emphatically that they bought 1UP because they really wanted 1UP, not to absorb it into UGO. I know. Given the cuts you're probably thinking something like but they got rid of so much. They offered me one of those few positions that remain, though, and I have to think that's because of what I do. Which brings this back to what I was saying about not knowing what sort of show I'll be doing. Put it another way, I think there's a good chance to put something together; it's why I'm here. If for some reason that doesn't start to work, then that changes the situation.

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=897817...cUserId=5324853

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

For 1UP Yours Fans, they've just recorded the last show :) Should be up this Tuesday

Originally Posted by Garnett Lee:

cried three times, and it was amazing. I love these guys and all of you. Only hope that what we do next meets approval

Originally Posted by John Davison:

last 1UP Yours was kinda emotional

Jwhdavison: final 1UP Yours will clock in at more than 3 hours. Should be up mid-week. You'll have to forgive us our self-indulgence

Source: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=349007

3 hours! :laugh:

Anyway, one final weekend confirmed.

[Richard Hammond]

Awesome cant wait.

[Emn1ty]

Wow, to me the big news is EGM's death - I'd been reading that magazine almost constantly since before the SNES' release. Even through many changes, it remained (IMO) the best multiplatform gaming mag out there. Another part of my childhood gone. :cry:

EGM was also my favorite mag and the first gaming mag I subscribed to. This is indeed a sad situation and I will really miss the way EGM did things.