Anyone who doesn't think most people who get game magazines wouldn't take a free subscription to Maxim is fooling themselves.

@Deweavy: Ugh, I remember that! I loved Jane so much; I was so dissappointed when they went under. It amazes me when they do a weird transfer like this. At least Jane to Glamour was fashion to fashion, albeit a more alternative one to a mainsteam one. Gaming to porn? Color me confused. I know that when Jane folded, I called up and got a refund of my subscription. Maybe the OP could do that as well?

egm was the type of gaming mag you'd read as a young kid, i stopped reading it rather early. glossier ones like next or edge were better. they took the route of going more detailed, taking more care in what they published because for the quick and dirty low down you can get that better online.

maxim has a bit of general popular media content in it as well. hardly something to complain about if you get it free. and anyways, anyone that can get past pc nonsense knows these mags are majority male subscribers.

On the other hand, I seem to recall him asking me to send in the renewal form and me asking him if he had cash or wanted me to take it out of his allowance, so maybe he decided not to renew.

@P_Smith:

...what?

For the record, I'd vote in favor of gay rights every time I had the chance...if I ever voted at all, which I don't.

So please educate us on who you figured my stance was on such a non-sequitor topic, and how you came to it, oh Great Kreskin.

Seriously...WTF?

To paint a picture, I've been an EGM subscriber for the better part of the last decade. I'm now a university student, but it is summer, so I live at home. My issue of Maxim came, and my mother literally said something along the lines of "If you want to send this kind of trash to your dorm room, fine, but don't send it to my house" to which I quickly protested that I hadn't signed up for Maxim, that I didn't want Maxim, and that she needed to take her head out (sorry mom, getting nagged for non-porn magazines when you are in your twenties isn't ok).

This is a great memory of the death of EGM. I know for a fact that a TON of kids read EGM (I was one of them) and that they've gotten Maxim as a replacement. I can only imagine the awkward conversation that has been happening between kids and their parents at homes all across the country because of this bungle.

Sneering, juvenile, pretentious writing? Uh, dear, you know there's porn on the internet?

@YouDidWhatNow?: Now we know where you stand on the issue of gay rights.

Please, Maxim is no worse then any: redbook or female equivalent book..

[www.egmnow.com]

I think Maxim is douchey too, I'm not saying it's high art or something. I'm just stating that the overbearing wife thing can be a bit much, and this is a perfect example.

Poor guy :/

I like scantily clad women, but sports... not so much.

and i dont see how my argument was dumb, but thanks for that.

granted, i dont know you or your husband. however, i assumed that a simple magazine (especially a transfer due to bankruptcy, sent with a written notice and a clause to get a interpolated refund) doesn't warrant a "freak out" no matter the content within at that level of "glossy paper entertainment media". i guess i assumed that people are more understanding and communicate better. i was wrong.

A coworker lent me a copy of EGM once. I was unimpressed. I can't even be bothered to leaf through the back issues he donated to the break room.

I tried!

Please.

That said, my husband would be pretty pissed if I suddenly started getting Cosmopolitan. For one thing, he'd assume I'd lost my mind, and for another, their articles are about half as obnoxious as Maxim's - which is bad enough.

Yes, it's far fetched, but possible.

Then again, it's not surprising that they'd link the two. There was a reason for Laura Croft's ever increasing bustline. I was aware of a creepily high number of guys who liked to get her killed because apparently she had a sexy death scream. Ewwww.

cause not to sound like a complete chauvinist, but the content in those magazines is debatably just as bad as maxim (which i am NOT a subscriber to, FYI). they are purely entertainment magazines.

if anything said husband would probably shrug, shank his head a bit and mumble something about $30 worth of subscription money down the drain and that'd be the end of it.

stupid double standard...

I'm pretty sure my wife would be more upset if I subscribed to Electronic Gaming Monthly as than if I got Maxim.

It never makes any sense.

This is the first I'm hearing about EGM going under, but I'm not that shocked. I was a subscriber from about 2000-2004, then let it run out. The content quality and volume had steadily decreased over the years. They were less a victim of the recession and the decline of magazines and more a victim of declining product quality.

@tongsy: Yes, but are you still "Master of your Domain"?

anyone who has a wife with a problem with maxim, needs a new wife not a new magazine subscription.

@The_IT_Crone:

?

I don't get what you're trying to say. Are you saying that since the demographic for EGM and Maxim are likely to overlap quite a bit, it's OK for them to substitute one for the other?

@pecan 3.14159265: i'm not into the photos in maxim, but a lot of the articles are pretty cool. stuff about how to survive a plane crash, bowling with skulls, rating various products, etc.

i am a lesbian, if that counts for anything. for what it's worth, the women who pose for maxim are not my type :P

@YouDidWhatNow?: so don't worry about demographics, just go with stereotypes in marketing? Got it.

@aphex242: conversely, half the population not liking it is pretty high for crap like this.

This isn't a big deal. The original mag went out of business. Rather than all of these people, myself included, just being out of luck and losing that money they paid for it, they are now being given a different magazine to replace it. If they don't like it, they can get their money back.

@dragonfire81: So screw women, kids, gay men, and anyone else?

It's not about who would enjoy it, but who would be offended.

@NerdBurger_GitEmSteveDave: I subscribed to EGM and much like OP I just brushed it off as "oh well im out of luck" but where the hell is my Maxim!?!

Anyone had luck changing these subscriptions to other publications after their preferred read folded?

Man, Olivia Wilde is hot.

I'd probably be a little freaked out if my husband started getting it because it would be very much unlike him. Not because of the girly pictures, but because so much of the content is just childish and bigoted.

Also in this case (as in most major magazine foldings) no one sold the list, it was transferred to what someone thought was the best corporate (Ziff Davis) stablemate match. Witha n eye toward maximizing ad sales, and minimizing refunds.

@pecan 3.14159265: I knowingly signed up for a free health subscription, but I have no idea where the LHJ came from. I did get some sweet cleaning tips from it though

Its a demographic thing. Teenage boys are the demo for both mags, also Maxim covers a lot of video gam and electronics stuff...scantly clad women are like 20% of the content, the rest is random "guy stuff" like sports equipment, car reviews, gaming reviews, movie/music reviews, etc.

I think my mother in law would like Ladies Home Journal. Me, not so much. I'm more of a "I can get this on the internet for free" girl. But I do have a subscription to Gourmet.

@robotrousers: I see the lawsuit coming from the husband whose wife divorced him over the unrequested Maxim subscription.

"Let's buy a bankrupt company's list and just take over their subscriptions. It'll give us a huge boost in 'readership' and the advertising folks will want to stay with us."

"You're a genius, boss, I guess that's why they pay you so much!"

That's just a guess, really. Who knows what kind of genius came up with this one.

@Shoelace: If they filed for bankruptcy would they be protected against having to issue a refund?

@pecan 3.14159265: I occasionally get magazines that I never subscribed to, like Ladies Home Journal, which as a 25 year old, is a little out of my age range. Magazines are given away with online orders etc all the time now

SirWired

I'm not surprised, considering I recently heard a game producer say "I want to make more games for the Maxim demographic." (Because there aren't enough!) That's the big huge thing right now - because apparently kids don't play video games anymore, and women never did. (And never will, if this kind of marketing keeps up. I know I'm not impressed by it.)

EGM's publishers (and some editors) definitely perceived it, at the end, to be aimed at the straight male ages 18-24 who wanted some "edginess" with his game reviews. I hear it didn't used to be like that. As a former industry source has told me, game journalism used to be less about the attitude and more about the games.

The amount of pointless macho in the video game industry astounds me. Or maybe that's just Xbox Live.

The people who don't want it now have the additional hassle of trying to get their money back or get switched to a magazine they actually want.

This is obviously a "problem" no one should take "seriously".

Customer: "You're delivering Maxim to my door technically for free!"

CSR: "And...?"

It's not an error, this is apparently what they do with dead magazines now. When the print version of Radar went under a few months ago, they tried to fulfill the rest of our subscription with the worthless paparazzi-photo and celeb gossip mag Star. There was no choice offered.

@spanky:

Was responding to comment entries, not the article itself. Sorry I didn't make that clear.

To that point though...it does baffle me that you'd substitute a men's entertainment mag for a video game mag. Even if the demographic overlaps considerably...it's not even close to the same thing.

He figured the right answer was "no," even though his now-wife is a super-feminist. But not all that worried about her fiance going to strip clubs.

So, yeah, straight women not so much Maxim's target demographic. ;)

...subscription runs to May 2010.

I've tried to write/call etc. to no avail. I'm dropping the magazines off to the guys at work (I work as a contractor) with the address portion ripped off. At least I get the amusement factor.

It's Maxim, not Penthouse.

(And even then, it's Penthouse, not bestiality porn ...)

I highly doubt my wife would care about this. She probably wouldn't care about me getting Playboy or something either as long as I was open and honest about it.

I don't think the issue here is so much that they chose Maxim (not really my cup of tea, but whatever) so much as that they decided to transfer people to a different magazine without asking instead of just giving them the prorated refund. THAT is what's wrong here, in my opinion.

Sharp, these publisher guys.

If your wife freaks out because you got Maxim in the mail, I feel sorry for you.

Now, if it had been me...? I would've enjoyed three years of scantily clad chicks. But it wasn't, so there you go.

Nobody in this story is saying they were offended by the pictures.

@PrimeMovr: Oh, you got to have the Ziff/Davis-sponsored fight too!? Glad I wasn't alone on that one.

Sorry folks, I have no time for anyone who complains about the photos in mags like Maxim. Get the $#%^ over it. There are few things that offend me as much as people who are offended by (or feign offense by) such images. I'm sure there's a nice cave somewhere very far away you can move.

Can we at least agree that regardless of what else we like, e.g., video games, movies, mowing the law, etc. we all like scantly clad women.

Now, liking the crap published in Maxim... that's something different entirely.

As much as I like looking at Olivia Wilde, I just want my video game magazine back.

I'm curious what percentage of them are male. If it's an overwhelming majority, that may indicate why they chose to switch to Maxim.

I still think they should have offered subscribers a choice.

Also, what's left for a decent gaming magazine these days? Game Informer?

When Jane folded I received a subscription to Glamour for the remainder. It just made me feel bad about myself and went into the trash. I'd rather have been able to refuse it, but I guess they have ti get new readers for their crappier magazines somehow