Are you saying that people should be okay with reading crap, because writing that crap feeds someone?
This mentality, equating any quality standards with "stupid opinion disagreement", is one of the things that brought the gaming journalism to the state it's in right now.

No, I am not.
It is one thing to disagree with someone and even to think that he should not be a professional writer. It is quite another to be dismissive of or to take pleasure in his misfortune. I can think of one columnist at Crispygamer who has never written anything I found any value in, and gaming journalism would not miss his criticism, but I would not be glad to hear of his unemployment.
The negative effects of equating quality standards with personal antipathy extend far beyond gaming journalism.

May as well just check out Rock, Paper, Shotgun instead, since it has some old PCG folks.

I had a subscription to PC gamer about 2 years ago, but I really hated the amount of advertising in them and decided it wasn't worth getting if about half of the magazine was ads.

Well said. Cover goodies aside, good editorial control is the only thing that magazines can offer us that the internet can't*.
My favourite parts of most papers and journals are are the columnists and the carefully selected letters to the editor.
(*) This is a cultural and not a technical challenge; internet users rarely post content that needs to be moderated before it is published.

Pics plox?

Thanks for the heads up. My subscription elapsed, and I won't bother renewing now.
Desslock was indeed often a pretty poor columnist. Mahood could be great or terrible. I feel most of the columnists weren't that great anyway, but they were still an important part of why I bought the mag.
FWIW, I think their reviews have been slanted toward their advertisers for many years now. Then again, that's pretty much par for the course in that industry. Slams are usually reserved for smaller games and unadvertised games, and criticisms of big games are conveniently missing.

Is the Backspace still there?

Considering that thousands of people lose their jobs every day, people who do a much more important job, and some who have a lot more need for that money, and that I do not have any empathy for them, why should I have any for him? Especially when he is a 'crap feeder' as Gambler called him.
Gaming journalism has been in steady decline for several years anyway, and whatever he said didn't give much "food for thought" as you said.
For the most part he hasn't been consistent, and often seemingly completely changing his mind on things. And he is welcoming the dumbing down of certain games (which has been pissing me off lately in certain sequels...) When his word is almost worshiped as law by some, it can have an unhealthy effect on game development.
If I want separate opinions, I'll get it from forums or friends. You don't need to an employee for it, which in it self lessens their credibility in these things. You can find separate opinions and columns everywhere if you can be bothered to look, better written, by people who are more consistent in their opinions.
But to be perfectly fair, I do not really care. I do not read magazines or websites like these, because it's all just a opinions. Whether they're there to make profit or some random dude, it doesn't matter. I do not read reviews or articles about gaming in general, other than out of pure curiosity or to get some general information about the gameplay in upcoming games, because it's just opinion either way. Whether it's paid, or bribed or whatever, nothing makes something automatically better.
Only reason to that I said what I said, was because that Desslock is more of an annoyance than the others, considering that I haven't heard about those.
You can agree or disagree with me. It's just opinion anyway, and in the end I suspect that neither of us care about the other one's anyway.

Its a shame that print media is dying. I think maybe one of the most terrible side effects of the internet will be the end of newspapers. I don't think people will appreciate them until they are gone.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7913400.stm
I agree that the editorials and articles are the most interesting parts of games mags... reviews, demos and news can all be gotten much faster on the web. I always used to love edge magazone because it went into depth, looked back on the creation of ancient classics, etc... something games blogs can't often do.
The Escapist is an interesting collection of articles and opinions... though I don't recommend the forums.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/

I've peeked into the forums there from time to time. Half the posts in each thread seems to have resulted in a bans.

PCG's columns weren't worth much after Trotter left. Desslock was kind of a joke. The guy before Vederman was the last good EIC I think.
As gaming has been dragged kicking and screaming into the mainstream, this kind of thing is everywhere. Dumbing down the publications to cater to the crap audience that it's building. It just took longer for PCG to get there.

*Coughs in distaste* Ugh. The forums there are the absolute worst! Every other post is some kind of insult/troll. I use to go there but I was quickly too disgusted to go back.

The sad part is whether you or not you like the opinions of gamers that specialize in their area they are now gone. A magazine that had offered a perspective or article or something for most people to enjoy has had an amputation.
I mean, who needs game reviews when, as many have already mentioned, you can get the info faster. You can listen to a podcast or friends or the guy at the store to tell you if they liked it or not, not some stupid number that recently has made no sense to me.
I have always liked reading a hard copy of anything rather than sit at the comp. but now that is over. If anyone from PCG is reading this thread I'm not renewing my subscription. To me the most interesting part of the mag, next to the previews section, is done...as am I.

But don't write off the articles based on the forums. Of course not all are good, but I like the way they "theme" each "issue" and then accept lots of different, semi-related articles on that month's theme.
EDGE has/had the best articles though...