History and criticism ended at PC Gamer this past month. I got my copy in the mail today, and they have cut all the opinion columns. Desslock, Bruce Todd, Andy Mahood, all of them. Just like my local newspaper reducing the Sunday comics to two eye-strain inducing pages, Future seems to have responded to financial pressures by cutting something it did well. They've gotten rid of the part that brought some perspective to gaming and kept the reviews and the hype. I feel badly for the guys who've lost the income after they've given me such good food for thought for years now.
And if the magazine's EIC used the word "commission" correctly in his intro, the magazine still had the money for the sleaziest, most disturbing cover they've had yet. Wasn't she a small child in the first game? I don't care if they explain inside somewhere; a cover like this without prior context is just creepy.
Edit: "with" in the last line was supposed to be "without"

Haven't read it (or even to previous ones) yet... Is it the one with Defense Grid on the disc?
BTW, the new EIC isn't as good as Kristen (and even Greg Vederman... oy vey). This is most scary.

this thread is worthless without pics.

OMGZ pics or GTFO lawl.
Haha, seriously though while its definitely sad that people got laid off. On the other hand I never did like PC gamer (or at least its Swedish counterpart).

I've only read a few reviews by Desslock, and those have been absolute crap.
Not exactly a review, but he wrote an article about RPG's, and how they should be simplified with no numbers, and used Bioshock as an example, which pissed me off. Good riddance that guy at least.
Haven't read anything by the others though.

So PC Gamer is just an expensive ad now?

That's it, PC Gamer will die. Without interesting columns, what will people subscribe for? The occasional "exclusive" that is quickly scanned and shared online anyway? The handful of cover disc goodies?

The trouble with the "cover disc goodies" is that they most can be downloaded at the usual sites. I just don't get it. Why get rid of the columnists? They're the reason to get a magizine in the first place. Reviews, news and demos are easily found on the internet.

I've not read the mag recently, and now I have no reason to.
Give me old back issues, plz.
BJ

Maybe the new EIC knows his audience all to well after all....

Cover disc goodies :)
Polish magazines give you full games. Just a month ago i got morrowind and both expansion packs just for three USD (+ some random game i don't remember)

As near as I can tell, yes.
Aside from the fact that I disagree with you about that particular column, your peevishness is appalling. You're glad he's out of a job because you disagree with him? Do you have any sense of perspective, or empathy for that matter?
And speaking of perspective, the issue here is the changing tide of journalism for games. If the only thing you have to contribute is that you are glad someone got fired, maybe you shouldn't have posted here at all.

I'm rather big in the PCG community... I'll try to get the reason why behind this.

Print media is dead. It's sad, but I can't say I'm really upset that PC Gamer is taking a hit. They've been striking me as a more shady type of game review magazine for some time now, running reviews on obviously pre-retail code and giving outrageously high scores to games that didn't deserve the numbers but had an ad or to in the same issue (*cough* Crysis *cough*).
I had a free sub to PC Gamer, and when it ran out this last time, I just let it go. We're in a new age, and unfortunately people don't pick up print rags anymore much when they can sit at a computer and get the same information free and faster 99% of the time.