About GameStar

GameStar

GameStar (short: GS) is Germany's leading PC-games magazine, published monthly in Munich by the Webedia Gaming GmbH, a subsidiary of the French Webedia group. Founded in 1997 by Charles Glimm, Jörg Langer and Toni Schwaiger with IDG Entertainment Media as publisher, the magazine quickly became the largest German-language video-games magazine in Europe, selling around 333,000 copies per month at its turn-of-the-millennium peak. Appearing on the penultimate Wednesday of each month with around 132 pages per issue, GameStar covers PC gaming with tests, previews, reports and hardware coverage. The gamestar.de website is among Germany's most-visited PC-games news portals, and GameStar operates Europe's largest editorial gaming channel on YouTube.

Overview

GameStar appears monthly – on the penultimate Wednesday of each month – with approximately 132 pages per issue, the page count varying with the number of currently released games. The magazine's editorial program covers the full spectrum of PC gaming: game tests and reviews with the magazine's renowned rating system, previews of upcoming titles, reports on the gaming industry and its personalities, hardware tests for the components that power the games, and the service journalism – tips, workshops, buying advice and mod coverage – that PC gamers need.

The target readership is the German-speaking PC-gaming community: the players who build and upgrade their own rigs, who follow the release calendar, who read the tests before they buy, who debate the ratings in the forums and who populate one of the largest internet forums in the German-speaking web – the GameStar community that has grown around the magazine and its website over nearly three decades.

The gamestar.de website extends the magazine into the digital formats: daily news, tests, videos and the community forums – described as probably the most-visited news portal for PC games in Germany, with its tens of thousands of daily visitors and its forum threads that run to thousands of posts. GameStar also operates the largest editorial gaming channel in Europe on YouTube – the video arm that carries the brand's journalism, entertainment formats and community content into the moving-image platform where the gaming audience lives.

History

GameStar was founded in 1997 by Charles Glimm, Jörg Langer and Toni Schwaiger, with the IDG Entertainment Media GmbH as publisher; the first issue appeared on 28 August 1997 (debuting for September 1997), with Jörg Langer as editor-in-chief. The new magazine quickly gained popularity in the booming late-nineties PC-gaming market: by the fourth quarter of 1999 it sold about 333,000 issues per month, and in 2000 it overtook its long-standing competitor PC Games as the largest German-language video-games magazine in Europe – the market leader in the golden age of the German games press.

IDG launched GameStar sister magazines in Italy, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the United States – the international expansion of the successful German formula. The American version was positioned quite differently from the rest, as a magazine for adults about PC and console games in the style of inCite. All of the international editions folded after a few months due to disappointing sales, except the Hungarian launch, which achieved long-term success – the German original remaining the brand's undisputed center.

In 2005 GameStar spawned the sister magazine /GameStar/dev, targeted at European game developers – the B2B title for the people who make the games, later continued as Making Games under Computec Media until its discontinuation in January 2022. The console-games sister GamePro – whose headquarters sat right next door to the GameStar office in Munich – covered the PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo worlds until its discontinuation in 2024.

The magazine's esports engagement included the popular GameStar Clanliga, the esports league featuring games such as Warcraft III, Counter-Strike and Tactical Ops – the competitive-gaming platform of the German scene's early years, when esports was still finding its professional structures.

In April 2015 GameStar and its sister magazine GamePro were sold by IDG to the French publisher Webedia – the ownership change that brought the German PC-gaming flagship into the French digital-media group. Under Webedia, GameStar continued as the German PC-gaming market's leading print brand while expanding its digital and video operations.

The editorial leadership changed over the decades: Jörg Langer was succeeded by Gunnar Lott as editor-in-chief, followed by Michael Trier on 1 December 2007; since June 2016 the editor-in-chief has been Heiko Klinge. The magazine carries the ISSN 1610-6547 in print and appears without interruption since 1997.

Content and Sections

The editorial program of GameStar follows the PC gamer's interests. Tests and reviews form the core: the in-depth game tests – with the magazine's renowned rating system that has judged thousands of titles over the decades – that guide readers' purchasing decisions, covering the full range from AAA blockbusters to indie discoveries, from strategy epics to role-playing adventures.

Previews report on upcoming titles: the hands-on impressions from studio visits and press events, the developer interviews and the feature stories that build anticipation for the release calendar's highlights – the journalism of expectation that is the games press's signature genre.

Reports cover the gaming industry: the business developments, the studio portraits, the technology trends – from ray tracing to AI – and the cultural phenomena of PC gaming, from the modding scene to the esports boom – the journalism that looks beyond the games to the world that makes them.

Hardware coverage addresses the PC gamer's second passion: graphics cards, processors, monitors, keyboards, mice and the system-building advice – the tests, benchmarks and buying guides for the rigs that run the games, the content that acknowledges that PC gaming is as much about the machine as about the software.

The service sections – tips and tricks, workshops, cheat databases and mod spotlights – provide the practical companion to the games themselves, the content that readers return to long after the test issue has been read.

Publisher and Organization

GameStar is published by the Webedia Gaming GmbH in Munich – the German subsidiary of the French Webedia group, which acquired the title from IDG in April 2015. The editor-in-chief is Heiko Klinge, in office since June 2016. The magazine appears monthly on the penultimate Wednesday, with around 132 pages per issue, and carries the ISSN 1610-6547 in print.

Digital Presence

The digital home of GameStar is gamestar.de – described as probably the most-visited news portal for PC games in Germany, with its daily news, tests, videos and one of the largest internet forums in the German-speaking web. The site extends the monthly magazine into the daily digital formats, serving the PC-gaming community's information needs between issues – the news, the reviews and the community discussion that never sleep.

GameStar operates the largest editorial gaming channel in Europe on YouTube – the video arm that carries the brand's tests, reports, let's-plays and entertainment formats into the moving-image platform where the gaming audience lives. The social media channels extend the magazine's reach to the platforms where PC gamers discuss their hobby, share their rigs and debate the latest releases.

With its 1997 founding, its monthly rhythm, its position as the largest German-language PC-games magazine in Europe and its digital portal among Germany's most-visited gaming sites, GameStar remains the central medium of German PC gaming – from the IDG founding to the Webedia era, from the 333,000-copy heyday to the multimedia present, from the monthly print issue to the daily news, the bustling forum and the YouTube channel.