The “Shoe” Drops; Resigns from ZD

Personal Reasons Cited; Sam Kennedy Replacement

Today Dan “Shoe” Hsu announced to the world via his blog that he was leaving Ziff Davis and the 1UP.com/EGM Network.

Hsu made very clear he is not the victim of layoffs or cutbacks at ZD. He told readers this is a personal decision after more than a decade in the EGM family. It’s noteworthy, however, that Hsu did leave one before, to become a part of the ill-fated Gamers.com. He then came back when the venture collapsed.

1UP Editor in Chief Sam Kennedy will assume Hsu’s position as Editorial Director.

Hsu’s words follow.

This is my own decision; I’m not being forced out or laid off or anything like that. And this is not related to the recent news about Games for Windows: The Official Magazine (and I hope I’m not stealing any thunder away from those guys — that’s not my intention here). It’s just time for me to move on. I’ve been here, mostly with EGM, since April of 1996. That’s 11 years (taking off one year when I did a brief stint at Gamers.com)…quite a long time!

[....] I know this sounds horribly clichéd, but I will miss my buddies most of all. There are some awesome, awesome people here at the 1UP Network…guys and girls I’ll consider my friends for the rest of my life (I don’t want to list any names here, because there are way, way too many to list). These are the people that make the content so awesome — not me. If I ever get remarried, I’m sure my wedding will look like an EGM/GFW/1UP/GameVideos reunion.

As for me, I plan on taking some much-needed time off…maybe two to four weeks before I get too antsy about seeing my savings account go down instead of up. It’s been literally 10 years since I’ve last taken a proper vacation that’s lasted more than 3-4 days, so I’m gonna use this time to sleep, rest, sleep, play videogames, and sleep and play videogames.