It’s official, folks. After numerous reports and posts today from many different media outlets, Ziff Davis has sold 1UP and its associated sites GameVideos.com, MyCheats.com, and GameTab.com to Hearst Corporation, parent company of UGO. And,sadly, Electronic Gaming Monthly is being shut down after 20 strong years of publication.

“We believe this is a smart transaction for Ziff Davis Media that places these market leading assets and teams in a great environment poised for further success. The transaction allows us to pay down debt and shift our full focus to our core PCMag Digital Network business. We thank our 1UP team members for their contributions and wish them the best of success into the future”, said Ziff Davis Media CEO Jason Young.

“Since we started UGO 11 years ago, we have served the gamer community and built a world-class online publishing platform,” said J Moses, CEO of UGO Entertainment. “The acquisition of 1UP, with its authentic voice, tenured editorial personalities and bustling user community, allows us to expand our base of quality content and represents a major step forward in UGO’s mission to become the leader in the games space.”

Being a huge fan of the 1UP Network and EGM, it was strange to find out about this news. The January 2009 issue of EGM (which is in stores now) will be the last issue of the print magazine.

And what makes things even worse is that the buyout has caused a lay-off of 30 Ziff-Davis employees, many of them very well-known journalists, including James Mielke and Shane Bettenhausen. Very sad news indeed about the lay-offs and I wish the ones let go good luck in their futures.

Source: Gamasutra