Former IGN Editor-in-Chief Hilary Goldstein has joined Epic Games' ChAIR. ChAIR Creative Director, Donald Mustard made the announcement on Epic Games blog. Hilary Goldstein will serve as the "Integrated Media Manager," a special position created just for him it seems. He'll work closely with ChAIR to bridge the gap between the developer and its fans.

In a "Friday Follow-Up" segment that aired on her show, Katie Couric admitted that her recent show on video game violence that featured a "who's who" of anti-video game voices was one-sided. The show, "Are Video Games Ruining Your Life?" aired on April 29 and featured Daniel Petric, who cited video games as being a "catalyst" for shooting and killing his mother on October 20, 2007. It also featured Dr.

UBM Tech announced that it will print the last issue of Game Developer Magazine in July, shutting down the publication dedicated to game developers of all stripes after a 19 year run. The parent company of the magazine and website Gamasutra did not disclose what will become of the magazine's staff at this point, though we do know that contributor Brandon Sheffield is out, as is Gamasutra news editor Frank Cifaldi.

On this week's show we try a live Google + Hangout - something we plan on doing once in awhile so our fans can interact with us more directly. Hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight are joined by James Fudge to talk about Sony's two-hour long PlayStation 4 Press Conference and the sad news of layoffs at IGN, GameSpy, UGO and 1UP. Download it now: SuperPAC Episode 42 (1 hour, 14 minutes) 189 MB.

Joystiq is reporting that Ziff Davis will be shutting down popular and long-running gaming sites 1UP, GameSpy, and UGO. The new owner of IGN also laid off the editorial staff at all three sites, as well as some employees at IGN. Ziff Davis's parent company J2 Global bought IGN and its various web properties earlier in the month, and today it has decided to focus on its core brands - IGN and AskMen.

An investigation conducted by UK gaming publication Computer & Video Games shows that some online retailers are not doing their best to keep under-age children from buying mature-rated video games online. The investigative report (which includes some video) shows a person purchasing three games online without any age verification checks blocking his purchase. The UK-based retailers found to be lacking in this area include Amazon UK, HMV and Zavvi.

IGN is now owned by Ziff Davis, parent company J2 Global today confirmed with GameSpot. Terms of the deal to buy the IGN assets from News Corp. were not disclosed as of this writing.

Earlier reports suggested J2 Global had inked a deal on IGN, paying "considerably" less than the $650 million News Corp. purchased the company for in 2005. In fact, some have speculated that they paid considerably less than what News Corp was asking for in today's market: $100 million.

Destructoid has an excellent recap of a CNN Town Hall lead by Anderson Cooper that actually discusses the issue of gun violence in a sensible way (thanks to PHX Corp. for the link in the shout box) and even includes a lengthy discussion on mental health issues.

Yesterday USA Today published an editorial by CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro, who sharply criticized CBS's interference in the editorial independence of CNET, noting that the technology web site has lost its credibility as a result. The editorial is in response to CBS not allowing CNET to award the Dish Hopper with Sling DVR the "Best of Show" award at CES 2013 because of an ongoing legal battle between the parent company and Dish.

IGN has a pretty interesting feature on the video game industry taking part in Vice-President Joe Biden's Gun Violence Commission called "The Politics of Violence." What is interesting about this feature is that it solicits the opinions of "20 of the top game writers" in the United States including Adam Sessler from Rev3 Games, Ben Kuchera from Penny Arcade Report, Ben Silverman from Yahoo!

Intent Media, which owns such popular games industry publications as MCV and Develop, has been acquired by North American publishing group NewBay Media. The deal also includes other Intent Media publications such as Music Week, ToyNews and Bike Biz. Intent Media founder and current managing director Stuart Dinsey will stay on that role and be in charge of the group's UK and European presence.

In an inspirational post on IGN, Greg Miller announces that "Greg Miller Beats Cancer (For Now)." We are excited to share the news that IGN's popular commentator, podcaster, and all around good guy Greg Miller has undergone treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and has successfully (so far) put the disease into remission. Miller announced that he had cancer back in early August.

Kotaku has a short article chronicling the Twitter hashtag #1reasonwhy, which has served as a rallying point over the last 24 hours or so on what women in both the video games industry and their female counterparts in games journalism have to put up with and why there are not as many women in both fields.

Magazine publisher Future Publishing has managed to record a £1.1 million profit for the full 2012 financial year, up from an £18 million loss in 2011. This in spite of the fact that the company reported that sales were down from £141.7 million to £123.5 million.

Time Magazine has compiled its list of the "All-Time 100 Video Games." Compiled by Time staffers, the list is divided by decades going all the way back to the 1970s and ending in 2010. Nominations from the 1970s include such classics as The Oregon Trail, Pong, and Space Invaders. For the 1980s hits such as Super Mario Bros., Frogger, Donkey Kong, and The Legend of Zelda get a listing. The 1990s choices include Solitaire, Doom, and Goldeneye 007.

Alloy Digital has completed the acquisition of the popular gaming website, The Escapist from Themis Media. Themis Media was advised on the sale by Redwood Capital and A. Buchholtz & Company, LLC. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The very last issue of Nintendo Power is complete, according to a tweet from Phil Theobald.

"The last issue of Nintendo Power should be on newsstands on December 11, everyone. Don't miss it--there's some amazing stuff in it," he said.

News of the magazine shutting down went public in August, much to the chagrin of fans who grew up reading the magazine during its 24 year lifespan.

Magazine publisher Ziff Davis has been purchased by business cloud services company j2 Global, the company announced yesterday. According to the announcement, j2 Global paid $167 million in cash for the company, with an expectation that the transaction will contribute $60 million to its 2013 revenue.

Publisher Future has told C&VG today that Xbox World and PSM3 will release their final issues next month as the company deepens its investment and focus into digital publications and properties. Future also said that it hopes to redeploy affected employees in different areas of its business. Future has been reorganizing its existing publications, cutting staff and discontinuing many of its more traditional print publications this year.

Wondering where former G4 Editor in Chief of games content and X-Play host Adam Sessler went after leaving G4 last April?

If you somehow managed to avoid the title of this story, he's found a new home at video network, Revision3.  You can watch his "I got a new job!" video to your left.

Former Joystiq editor-in-chief Chris Grant, who left the publication at the end of 2011 to join what is now known as Polygon, tells GamesIndustry International in a new interview (to promote the official launch of the site on its own domain this week) that Joystiq parent company AOL has no "gaming appetite." AOL acquired Joystiq as part of its buyout of Weblogs in October 2005. Grant went on to say that AOL didn't seem to notice or care about the success that he and his former colleagues at Joystiq had in building up the site over the years.

A war of words between Gawker Media and the Reddit community might make for some marvelous online drama, but it doesn't sit well with Wishan Wong, chief executive of Reddit. An internal memo obtained by Gawker and attributed Wong, reveals that Reddit's CEO thinks free speech is paramount to the community but that the ban on Gawker links is not a good idea.

According to a Wall Street Journal report citing sources on close to the situation, News Corp. has enlisted the services of investment bank Allen & Co. to help sell off IGN and its network of video game and entertainment sites via an auction. This, the report claims, comes on the heels of a year of failed negotiations to sell the spun-out division for $100 million. Companies that showed some interest included Break Media and SAY Media, according to WSJ. News Corp.

With eight more days to go, Andrea Seabrook has managed to raise $36,669 of her $75,000 goal to help fund her innovative podcast, DecodeDC. Seabrook says that "Washington D.C. is broken." She should know - she spent many years as a national correspondent to Congress at National Public Radio. A few months ago she had had enough of lawmakers "lying to her face" and decided to leave NPR to do something different.

Markus 'Notch' Persson, creator of Minecraft and co-founder of Mojang, decided to take to his blog today to respond to an editorial by games journalist John Callaham entitled "Notch: Don't be a hypocrite about Minecraft and Windows 8" over at Neowin.

Former National Public Radio congressional correspondent Andrea Seabrook has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund her new show, DecodeDC. Seabrook calls her new show "a new way to cover Washington." In other words, coverage that tosses aside the stupid Red State v. Blue State narrative and spin and looks at how the system is working for the American people. Here's what Seabrook says about the Kickstarter:

Games media veteran John Davison has joined Red Robot Labs. Prior to taking the plunge into the world of game development, Davison worked for Ziff Davis and IDG Media. Most recently he served as the vice president of programming at CBS Interactive Games, overseeing web sites GameSpot, Metacritic, Giant Bomb and Comic Vine. Prior to that he led the GamePro brand at IDG. In 2007 he founded "What They Play," which he later sold to IGN/Fox Interactive Media in 2009.

Mike Snyder and Brett Molina wrote their last post on the USA Today-hosted game blog, Game Hunters this morning.

As the publication celebrates its 30th anniversary and prepares for a redesign it looks like the popular and award winning blog is being shut down.

Game Hunters has been a popular daily destination for gamers for three and a half years, but Mike and Brett aren't going anywhere... More from their last post on Game Hunters:

The popular English video game site Andriasang will be closing down, according to owner Anoop Gantayat, who is moving on to new and exciting opportunities. While the site will no longer be updated with news, Gantayat says that that he may do a little bit of database work there and will leave its content up for people to continue to peruse.

The site is best known for delivering breaking news from the games industry. Andriasang launched in 2008 and currently contains 14,000 articles.

Games Industry International announced today that it has acquired the GameHorizon Conference and business network, with plans for the launch of a new event in December of 2013. GameHorizon is a leading business network for UK-based games companies including developers, publishers, and middleware makers. GameHorizon is in its fifth year.