Prima Games shutting down

Yet another long-running staple of print gaming media is being pulled. EGM Now is reporting today that strategy guide imprint Prima Games will halt operations by next spring.

The website attributes the news to sources affected by the closure. Prima is part of the Penguin Random House publishing company, specifically part of the Dorling Kindersley division of reference books, which was quoted describing the shutdown as an "extremely difficult decision."

EGM Now reports that employees at Prima offices in New York, Indianapolis, and Roseville, California will be impacted by the closure. Roseville is expected to close this month, with some Indianapolis employees continuing to work until March. (The company is currently taking preorders for a number of upcoming digital and print guides for games, the furthest out of which appears to be next February's guide for Anthem.)

Prima was founded in 1990, and grew to become a dominant name in the print strategy guide space. Corporate consolidation in the book publishing space led to Penguin Random House owning both Prima and its primary competitor Brady Games, and the two brands were merged under the Prima banner in 2015.

[UPDATE]: A Prima representative confirmed that the company will no longer commission new strategy guides, discontinuing the imprint in spring of 2019. As for layoffs associated with the move, the representative said, "We are in conversations with the Prima Games team and cannot comment on this further at this point."