GameInformer gave Starfield 9.25/10. GameStop owned the magazine. Now it's dead.

Let's follow the money. GameInformer Magazine was owned by GameStop Corp. GameStop Corp sells video games, including preorder bundles for Starfield with exclusive steelbooks and physical edition content. GameStop's front-of-store displays featured Starfield for months leading up to launch. GameStop's stock price depends on big holiday releases moving units. And GameStop's in-house magazine gave that exact game a 9.25/10. See the problem? I'll wait.

A 9.25. Not a 9. Not a 9.5. A nine-point-two-five. Two decimal places of precision for a game that launched with 1,000 procedurally-generated planets that all look like the same beige gravel pit, loading screens stapled to every door frame, and NPCs with the facial animation range of a frozen salmon. What exact metric pushed it from 9.0 to 9.25? Did the sandwich physics add 0.15? Did the photo mode contribute 0.10? Show me the rubric. I want receipts.

The review itself reads like a retail display placard. 'Expansive space opera for the ages.' 'Ages' is doing heavy lifting there for a game that cratered to 'Mostly Negative' Steam reviews within months and dropped off the Game Pass most-played list faster than a Skyrim save file. But sure. Ages. Cosmic ages. They'll study this review in the year 3000, right next to the carved tablets that read GAMESTOP PREORDER INCLUDES CONSTELLATION PATCH.

And here's the punchline: GameInformer is gone. GameStop shut the magazine down in August 2024. Thirty-three years of print journalism, killed off by the parent company that owned both the reviewer and the retailer selling the reviewed product. The 9.25 outlived the publication. The conflict of interest didn't even have the decency to end in a scandal — it ended in a layoff notice. Sponsored by the truth.