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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land The publisher of EGM, Games for Windows: The Official Magazine and 1UP.com has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a Manhattan court today, in an attempt to restructure its sizable, long-term debt. Ziff Davis has, according to Bloomberg’s report, filed papers indicating it has somewhere between $US 500 million and $US 1 billion in debt, with previous reports pegging the debt at around $US 400 million.
Earlier today, we posted about the plight of “tiny Brazilian blog” Blogeek, who, as you may remember, posted a pair of screen shots of Street Fighter IV yesterday. Amazingly, the site scooped 1UP to its own exclusive, claiming it had received the screens and details on the Capcom fighter from an “anonymous source”. The site’s owner, Douglas Pereira, wrote us this morning, crying out for help. “Ziff Davis is going after me. They’re chasing me,” he lamented. It was very heart-wrenching.
Yesterday a tiny little Brazilian gaming site called Blogeek run by Douglas Pereia stumbled upon some new information and screens of Capcom’s Street Fighter IV, which were due to be revealed in the next issue of EGM, which will surely grace bathroom floors across the country when it comes out. Gaming websites around the world – including Kotaku – picked up the story and ran with it. Douglas received the information from an anonymous source, but it all looks and feels legit. Well now said information has been confirmed in the form of a threatening e-mail to Douglas from André Forastieri, the boss of Futuro Comunicação, the publisher of the Brazilian EGM. “The content you posted in the site blogeek is property of Ziff Davis, given from Capcom only to Ziff Davis and EGM issues, with embargo for the publications. Your publication of this subject is theft of intellectual property and should have immediate legal consequences. Ziff Davis and Futuro want you to cut off the content form your site immediately.”
Pereia informed me that a follow up email informed him that Ziff Davis and Capcom lawyers were working to see what they could do to him, and that sales of the Street Fighter IV issue of EGM would suffer from the leak and he was responsible. Pressure is being put on Pereia to reveal his source as well, though Douglas refuses to do so.
UPDATE: Please see this post for comment from Ziff-Davis via EGM editor in chief Dan Hsu.
Ziff Davis’ DigitalLife show is all over, but the awards were just announced today. Among the dozen award winners were two gaming standouts: Guitar Hero III in the Game category and HP Blackbird 002 in the Gaming Hardware category.
Hit the jump for the short break down of why the PC Magazine editors, led by Editor-in-Chief, Lance Ulanoff, picked these two as the top in gaming.
OPM rises again this November with a new set of letters and a brand new publisher. Exactly one year after Ziff-Davis set Official Playstation Magazine adrift into the sea of dead print media, Future U.S. will relaunch Playstation: The Official Magazine.
Future, publisher’s of the UK version of OPM, also managed to snag Rob Smith, former editor-in-chief of PSM, to run their new mag. The first edition of the 13-issue-a-year magazine will hit in late November with a 300,000 circulation run.
“Future US has a strong heritage delivering cutting-edge insight into the industry, and we are looking forward to a long standing relationship to deliver unrivaled exclusive content to PlayStation fans,” said Peter Dille, Senior Vice President, Marketing and PLAYSTATION(R)Network, SCEA. “We’re very excited to be working with a group that is nearly as passionate about our brand as we are ourselves and we look forward to working with Future on many innovative ideas they have to create a best in class enthusiast publication.”
The fact that PSM UK seems to be doing quite fine overseas leads me to believe that maybe Ziff-Davis’ retreat from the pub was more about their financial stability than the well-being of the magazine itself.
The publisher of Electronic Gaming Monthly and Games for Windows Magazine, Ziff-Davis Media, failed to make an interest payment yesterday and announced that it was negotiating with its lenders to restructure a rather sizable debt. The company, which also owns the web sites 1UP, FileFront, GameVideos, MyCheats and GameTab, owes some $US390 million, a figure which CEO Josh Young says “was put on the company when it was a very different scale.” The group now employs less than 300, down from 1200 at one point.
You know the Ziff Davis Group? They own 1UP, EGM and Games for Windows Magazine. If so, you probably also know Ziff have been trying to offload their gaming group for a while now. With no success. Nobody wants it! At least, not under their conditions: Ziff will only sell the group as a whole, print AND online, but buyers only want the online stuff. Well, Ziff now have a new CEO, Jason Young, who’s decided to scale back that particular operation: …while the sale process has been a very sharp focus over last 12 months, now that becomes less of a focus. The clearer focus is now on operating the business ourselves.
Quite the about-face, that. Time to roll up those sleeves, Ziff. Young Appointed Ziff Davis CEO, Game Group Sale ‘Less Of A Focus’ [Gamasutra]
