PC Gamer had several covers like that (even for subscribers) back when I still got it by mail. You had to remove the sticky ad-cover to get the real one. It's all fairly ridiculous and is one of the many reasons I canceled my subscription.

Hmm, never seen anything like that in the UK, PC gamer has come with an outer cover a few times, but normally just mimics the actually cover :\

It's been like this for years.....

'eh? So what? It's called a cover tip.

I work in the publishing industry. This is actually a standard practice. One of the magazines I work for is having a Hershey cover tip this month.

I really don't think this is as bad as you guys are making it out to be. This practice has been going on for years and years now!

@Flawless101: What's worse is the multi-page "magazine within your magazine" ads. In other words at the end of PC Gamer you'd come to a section called "cell play" that had a small ad disclaimer before it and lasted for up to 10 pages of simply cell phone game reviews and articles. If I wanted a magazine about cell phone games I would have bought a magazine about cell phone games.

Nothing surprising. Even the free newspapers in London are like that.

@Mr. Fap☆Fap!: "It's called a cover tip."

i like to call them cover protectors.

Yup. I'll second everyone else. This has been happening for quite a while, although I wouldn't say it's any less annoying. Two magazines which come to my mind are EGM and Computer Gaming...errr...Games for Windows. Ziff Davis tends to have a fair amount of such covers.

A friend got me a subscription to OXM last year. When they started having 30 fucking page sections in the middle of the magazine as a massive ad for shitty cell phone gaming is when I decided not to renew. Absolutely fucking ridiculous, so is this cover thing.

@JonC: Why do you think the Metro is free? ;)

Doesn't EGM do this quite often? A few issues ago, it was wrapped in a Dark Sector ad.

And if I'm not crazy, GI pulls this stunt from time to time. I know EGM definitely does it, so it's not just other places, it's in America, too.

@Flawless101:

MCV magazine does exactly this all the time, but it is a trade rather than a comsumer magazine.

Any game featured on the front of any games magazine, or indeed featured on almost any commercial website is there because the publisher's publicity people "arranged" for it to be there, though.

@sariah: Ziff and Future are the big gaming mag guys, they seem to be getting worse and worse in the obtrusive advertising department. It's hard for print magazines to survive these days, but it seems over the top to replace the entire cover or insert 10-page+ ads. http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk and http://www.ziffdavis.com/

Yeah, this is NOT new. I guess the story here really is that Ashcraft is so out of touch with print to think this is a big deal.

I'm sure more than just covers are for sale these days, you only have to look at some of the high scores given to complete dross to see that the only impartial reviewer you can trust is yourself. Personally, I make all my decisions based on demos and I've regretted very, very few of my purchases since then.

Brian, I think they've been doing this for years. When I used to buy magazines, I saw something similar. The only startling difference here is that the fake cover and the real cover aren't related.

In this case, it may be a smart move on OXM's part as Fallout probably isn't as iconic as Tom Clancy's name so it may move more magazines.

I would take pause though before declaring something like "Game Magazine Cover was for Sale" as that kind of makes the magazine unscrupulous when that couldn't be further from the truth. It's probably more of a sad commentary on just how much advertising is drying up in game enthusiast print media.

@alb1221: You are not technically "buying" those 10 pages of ads, because they are not displacing original content. Every page of paid ads allows for 2 or 3 pages of editorial content, so more ads equals more of the stuff you want. This is why the page count of magazines varies from issue to issue. Mr.FAPFAP might be able to shed a bit more light on this practice.

I've seen tons of these, and not just for gaming mags.

The ones that have annoyed me in the past months are the 12-page ads for a domain hosting service. Its page after page of annoying advertisements for something I have no interest in and the same one appears everywhere.

What if kotaku site is an adertizement when you come on, and you had to scroll all the way to the bottom and click on a button before you actually get to it. That would suck bad and I wouldn't be reading it anymore. Just a warning if you are thinking about it :)

I'd be willing to pay ~50$ for a magazine with absolutely no advertising or 3rd party financing whatsoever. Not because I'm rich, because I'm not, but because it's just so incredible annoying.

Unfourtunaly, I suppose a lot of people aren't that bothered by it, so there's not really any market for that kind of high-priced mags..

Also, considering mags are more ad-driven then subscription-driven, you expect them to whore out their pages as long as their opinions and stories aren't up for sale ;)

@ajm1240:
Ha! I guess so! I read the magazines I write for, and I don't remember them doing anything like this.

@Nico8332: Yeah, I wouldn't. Sorry buddy.

It happens on my so-called chick mags, as well. Ads for hair products or whatever. It is so not a big deal. Hell, People Magazine, and the like, put cover tips on their mags about every third issue or so. I do agree about the mini mag inserts, though. Those are annoying.

@alb1221: Cell play is why I let my PC Gamer subscription run out. The stick-on covers were annoying, but 20+ pages straight of ads were just too much for me. I know it wasn't taking up space for content (the magazine editorial had no say on the ads really), but since the magazine was like 40% content 60% ads I figured I could spend my money somewhere else.

"Everyone in the conference room! We have an emergency, Jenkins here accidentally sold the cover space twice... Any ideas?"
"Fire Jenkins"
"Good idea. Jenkins, pack your stuff, you're gone! Any others?"
"Let's just put two covers on the magazine."
"...Brilliant!"

@Slap Bet: Careful there, I don't think your boss would appriciate you leaking internal conference transcripts on Kotaku.. :-/

This happens all the time. Not sure why anyone would think it's a big deal.

Yea, I'm with everyone on this going on for a long time. I remember a few games that also had this done, like Dark Sector and Assassin's Creed. They usually come in a removable form so that they can be removed without damaging the magazine, but they recently started to put too much glue on and its been riping the spine off...

I have nothing but love for magazine editors but magazines need to die already.

The same thing happened with Game Informer, it had a Dark Sector ad as the main cover. Dunno what the real one is, I didn't removed it yet, lol.

I think it was the Aliens game cover.

@aka Bitter:
It depends on the magazine, really. Some books have a fixed page count that doesn't change no matter how many ads you run. Other times they have to meet a set number of editorial pages vs ads.
...and sometimes if the deadline is tight, they'll just say 'screw it' and count those sections as pages just to get the thing out the door on time.

This is actually news to me. But I'm out of touch with print. Stopped seeing a point to it when I got a connection better than dialup.

I've pretty much gotten used to it, so I ignore it.

EGM did this same thing two months ago. I was completely floored. I thought, this is the end for EGM.

@Brian Ashcraft: You write for publications where the content is less commoditized. Game magazines have put themselves in the position where most of their writing is interchangeable, and timeliness becomes really the only factor. It's a shame, really; they have an opportunity to respond by creating content of a quality you can't find online to drive sales, but, instead, they make up for lagging distribution figures by selling every inch of advertising space they can mange.

Nothing beats the "Advertorials" present in all those issues of GFW. Did anyone ever actually take the time to read those?

lmao, i would rather get it in the cover than in the middle of the editorial or on the side line of articles. :P

Every magazine does this. And every magazine has "advertorials" too.

I'm convinced it's one reason why magazine circulation is in the toilet. Who wants to pay money for a 30 page advertising section? Especially when the actual editorial content of the magazine probably doesn't add up to any more than that, these days. There really is a perception that actual content is being replaced with ads.

(It'd be different if there were just more pages, but there aren't.)

Euhm... being an ex editor-in-chief who got forced out partly because he wouldn't bend to the rules of 'the game', I can tell you that almost ALL magazines sell their cover.

Yep, UK, Benelux, France... Publishers pay hard $$$ to be the one on the cover.

That's why only games with big marketing budgets go on the cover. That's why you don't see Okami or Viewtiful Joe covers... Or Atari covers :D

@Mr. Fap☆Fap!:
I agree. I too am in the publishing industry, but our company doesn't do cover tips. I've seen this in all forms of magazines though.

Print media is on the up, no i'm talking crap. Give it 6 months time and these mag's will be dropped. The only reason for them are demos, which are offered online now, and quality reviews/opinions which are now all over the net if you know haow to look.

This is for the Direct Sales edition only (subscribers). Notice the lack of a UPC code on the cover. The Newsstand edition (the one with the UPC code) does not feature the Rainbow Six advertisement cover.

As a subscriber to the magazine, I have noticed this several times over the past years. I already purchased the magazine so I did not purchase the magazine based on the cover content, and since the Newsstand edition does not feature the ad cover, consumers are not being misslead. I do not see this as an issue.

Now a real issue is how to post a title like "Achievements on Xbox Original games?" Then inside the magazine the article says "NOT", to me that is missleading.

hey, i wrote that article (on insert credit).

i should go to the ATM to see if my bank account has inflated since the posting of this link.

also, i see a fair share of magazines over here, in The Japan, and this was the first time i'd seen something like this.

shame on all of you for not making a very big deal about this sooner.

seriously.

I read a lot of music magazines and see this all the time too, and I guess its the equivalent of when you go to 1up or Gamespot and get the ad you have to click through the first time before the main page loads.

Still, better in the magazines than in the games, I'm still worried about the day I'll have to watch un-skippable ads before my game boots up, like what happens on some movie DVDs.

@108: The best thing to do about something like that is to cancel subscriptions and not buy the magazine, and that's what many of us did/have been doing. Nothing speaks louder than that, at least in the States.

@alb1221: The thing that really pisses me off about the Cell Play ad in PC gamer is that unlike any other mag which i see it in, PC Gamer goes out of its way to present it as a legitimate section of their mag that they are writing and that they are actually recommending this shovelware for purchase. In fact, ANY other time I've ever seen any ad that mimicked an article in any publication it has always had ADVERTISMENT printed in big bold letters. Which is a shame since now I feel that I can't trust any of their reviews.

All the free magazines I get, EGM, Stuff, and others, will have another cover. This has been happening for years... no news here!

Much like how a good portion of Kotaku's real estate is for sale...?