Joystiq closure official

Joystiq and its MMO-focused sister-site Massively will cease publication on Tuesday. Earlier this week, multiple reports surfaced--one of them from Joystiq itself--claiming that parent company AOL was planning the site's imminent shutdown as part of a reshuffling for its content division. That was made official today by a tweet from Joystiq news content director Alexander Sliwinski and a post on Massively by the site's editor-in-chief, Bree Royce.

"I would like to be able to tell you truthfully that this is an equitable and just decision that makes some sort of logical sense, but the reality is that our overlords' decisions have always been unfathomable," Royce said, adding, "We all suspected this was coming eventually a year ago when a VP whose name I don't even know and who never read our site chose to reward our staggering, hard-won 40 percent year-over-year page view growth by... hacking our budget in half. There's nothing to do in the face of that kind of logic but throw your hands in the air. It's not about merit or lack thereof, and it's not about journalism or gaming being dead or anything grand like that, so there's no point in taking it personally."

Both sites are expected to continue publishing new content until Tuesday. The official Joystiq Twitter account has circulated a list of impacted employees' LinkedIn resumes in an effort to find them new opportunities. The list contains 13 Joystiq employees and another seven from Massively.