The ongoing saga of Highbury’s debt problems (covered here) looks like it could be coming to a close with the announcement that the other Bournemouth-based games magazine company, Imagine Publishing, which was set up by the original founder of Paragon, which became Highbury Entertainment before being bought out by Imagine. Still with me? Imagine’s output is improving but when they started out it was impressively bad.

Imagine are only taking on the profit-making magazines from Highbury (which includes GamesTM and Play) and laying off a lot of staff who are finding out in the next couple of weeks whether or not they still have a job. That can’t be fun and although it seems like the guys I know on GamesTM and Jude on Play are safe since they have editorial jobs on profitable mags, I know that my cousin who worked in the design department there is now only allowed to go back for two hours on Monday to clear out his personal belongings. That has to suck…