United States · 1991–present
The retailer-owned magazine that began as FuncoLand's newsletter in 1991 and, bundled with GameStop's loyalty programme, became one of the most widely circulated magazines in the US.
Game Informer started in August 1991 as an in-house newsletter for the video game retailer FuncoLand, whose owner wanted a better use for the company's advertising budget. Andy McNamara became its editor in the early 1990s, and it went monthly in November 1994. When GameStop bought FuncoLand in 2000 it acquired the magazine too, and under publisher Cathy Preston subscriptions became part of GameStop's PowerUp Rewards loyalty programme. That gave it a circulation few magazines could match: more than 8 million copies in 2011, the third-largest in the United States. Its features included an annual Game of the Year award from 1992, when the winner was Street Fighter II, and Game Infarcer, an April Fools' parody issue. GameStop closed the magazine abruptly on 2 August 2024 after 368 issues, but in 2025 Gunzilla Games bought it, rehired the staff and restarted print publication.