EGM's Honesty Their Downfall?

John "Hunter" D. Norman (nice anime reference there), of Die Hard Gamer discusses one major reason why EGM closed:

Ubisoft used to be one of EGM’s biggest advertisers. In December 2007 alone they purchased eight pages of advertisements. By January 2008 they were no longer advertising in EGM. What changed in that issue? EGM gave Assassin’s Creed an aggregate score of 5.83 out of 10, one of Ubisoft’s biggest games of the year. It is said that Ubisoft was actively pushing magazines for positive scores, both threatening to pull advertising from media outlets that did not give high marks, and only allowing media outlets with positive scores to break the review embargo date. EGM would not give in to Ubisoft and in turn Ubisoft would never advertise in EGM again. Talk about holding a grudge. EGM would at least have the satisfaction of blasting another one of Ubisoft’s high profile flops, Haze, with a D+ score and a “Shame of the Month” award.

As subscriber to the bitter end (they still owe me five issues!), this development happened right under my nose. And Ubisoft was one of the smaller companies. Norman goes on to discuss the ad bullying of companies like Capcom, Konami and Nintendo (NINTENDO!). The world has gone mad, I tell you.