When I went to E3 in 2004, there was a magazine reseller with an amazing deal: four magazine subscriptions, four years each, for $44. I couldn’t pass that deal up, so I bought one set of subscriptions for myself, and one for my generous host who let me stay at his house while I was in town. The magazines I got were Electronic Gaming Monthly, Official U.S. PlayStation magazine, GMR (a general gamer magazine), and XBN (Xbox Nation). When I hadn’t received anything after a few months, I thought I had been scammed. But by October of 2004, the magazines started rolling in.
Then in February of 2005, both GMR and XBN shut down. I was informed by mail that my remaining issues on both subscriptions would be transferred to some new gadget magazine which I wasn’t interested, so I called and talked to them, and they split my remaining issues: half went to Computer Gaming World, and half went to extend my EGM subscription. Then at some later date, the PlayStation magazine stopped as well, so I used its issues to extend EGM as well. When I checked my EGM subscription later, I saw my expiration date as “Aug 15.” I wondered, August 15th of which year?, but then later discovered that it was actually August of 2015.
Jump ahead to 2008. Computer Gaming World is now Games for Windows, but in April, they also ceased publication, deciding instead to focus on their online component. With 46 issues remaining, I could either extend my EGM subscription even further, or take a cash refund for the remaining issues. My EGM subscription has inexplicably ballooned to 2020, so I’m not sure that extending it to 2024 would provide much added value. When I asked, I was informed that the cash refund would be $83.51, or nearly double the price I initially paid. If I had known that four years ago, I would have bought more subscriptions.
