Editor Tuija Lindén Frequency Monthly Year founded 1992 | Categories Video game magazine Circulation 21,469 (2013) Company Fokus Media Finland | |
Pelit ("Games") is a Finnish video games magazine published in Helsinki, Finland.
History and profile
Pelit was started in 1992. The magazine was published 11 times a year by Sanoma Magazines, a division of the Sanoma Group. The group sold the magazine to Fokus Media Finland on 1 September 2014.
Being by far the largest of its kind in Finland and covering both PCs and consoles, it has for a long time lacked serious competition and is thought by many to be the magazine of its kind, especially on the side of computer games. Recently some newcomers, mainly Pelaaja and Tilt have started to challenge its position as the sole choice for a serious Finnish gaming magazine. Pelit is an old-timer, originally dating back to 1987, as an annual extra games-only issue of MikroBitti and C-lehti. Another annual issue was published in 1988, and in 1989 it became semi-annual (two times per year).
In 1992, the staff of the semi-annual computer game book found themselves fed up with the limitations of their format, and thus the proper Pelit magazine was started. Its layout and contents have occasionally been revised over the years. Game walkthroughs were dropped as the adventure and old-fashioned role-playing games, the primary subjects, dwindled. A comic, KyöPelit, was started in 1993 and has since successfully avoided making sense. While the magazine started with four computer platforms, coverage for the Amiga, Commodore 64 and Atari ST dwindled as the market share for those platforms diminished. The most notable changes the magazine underwent were the 1998 founding of its sister publication, the PlayStation-focused Peliasema, and the later merging of the two as a practical necessity with the growth of the console market and the weakening of the PC games market.
Pelit's editor-in-chief was Tuija Lindén. Its staff includes the accidental gaming icon Niko Nirvi and the cartoonist Wallu. Jyrki Kasvi spent several years as a game reviewer as well as a columnist under the pseudonym of Wexteen the Wizard. Kasvi is nowadays a politician and was a member of the Finnish Parliament between 2003–2011. Pelit's review scores are listed on Metacritic.
The 2011 circulation of the monthly was 26,245 copies. The magazine had a circulation of 21,469 copies in 2013.