Publisher Ziff Davis, which launched GFW in 2006 as a rebranding of the 25-year-old mag Computer Gaming World, cited the movement of readership to internet-based news sources as impetus for the closure. The final print issue of Games for Windows, April/May 2008, is on newsstands now.

"PC gamers and marketers have made the online space their home," said Ziff Davis CEO Jason Young. "There are 10 million 'World of Warcraft' subscribers, 15 million Steam users...It's a natural move for us to refocus our resources and talent to the online space, in order to reach the PC gaming community where it truly lives."

Ziff Davis, which owns and operates the 1UP Network and its publications, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month due to mounting debt totaling between $500 million and $1 billion. But 1UP Network content VP Simon Cox said that GFW's online-only transition had little to do with parent Ziff Davis' financial troubles.

"[The transition] has nothing to do with the Chapter 11 stuff," Cox wrote on his 1UP blog. "Both the eyeballs of PC gamers, and the essential advertising dollars needed to sustain a PC gaming magazine are moving online at an alarming pace...it was time to put the GFW team's efforts where the most people could see the results: Online."

Cox noted that while Games for Windows editors Jeff Green, Sean Molloy, Shawn Elliot and Ryan Scott will provide PC gaming coverage for the 1UP network, the magazine's art staff—Michael Jennings and Rosemary Pinkham—would not make the transition.