Another Quick Update on Shipping the EGM Compendium
5 days ago
– Tue, Jun 30, 2026 at 02:59:57 PM
Hello once again! After our last update we had a number of backers ask about how we would be shipping your packages once they arrive from the printer at our fulfillment center. Once we’re a little closer to the actual mailing we’ll have additional information on how to track your package (you’ll be able to), what couriers we’re using (it will be different depending on where you live), and if you’re in a tier that will receive rewards split into two separate shipments (and, if you are, know that we will be sending them at the same time).
Today, however, we wanted to address questions relating to how we’re packaging the books and other rewards to ensure they get to you in pristine condition.
To that end, we have been working with our printing and fulfillment partners to make sure that the materials we’re using to ship your books and rewards are tough enough to withstand the trip, and we’ll be using protective packing to protect the corners and edges of the book as well as wrapping everything in plastic to make sure there are no inadvertent scratches or defects.
Additionally, for those in the higher reward tiers, most of the printed items you’ll be receiving are being assembled into packaging being created especially for the shipment of your order. This way, we can make sure everything is snug and secure at the source and isn’t going to be re-assembled later once our fulfillment company receives the packages from the printer.
Now, all that said, we obviously cannot guarantee that someone won’t receive a box that has been mishandled in transit or is otherwise damaged. It happens. But we’re doing everything we can to reduce the likelihood that your package will arrive with defects. If that does happen, however, we are producing a extra books and rewards to make sure that if anyone has an issue with their shipment we’ll have replacement copies handy.
Our goal is to make sure that once the books and rewards begin shipping that you’ll be able to rest assured that everything you pledged for arrives in the condition that you expect.
We’ll have another update with a sneak peek at what’s in store for readers of EGM #265 as well as some future plans we have with the Digital Archive and EGM coming in the next week or two. Until then, thank you to everyone for your continued patience and support of EGM!
When you can expect to receive your physical copy of The EGM Compendium
24 days ago
– Thu, Jun 11, 2026 at 09:04:23 AM
Hello, and thanks yet again to all of our wonderful backers!
Now that we’re moving toward the fulfillment stage of the campaign, we wanted to share some exciting specifics. So let’s address our single most-asked question—when your book will arrive—and start talking in more detail about our big EGM #265 stretch goal.
Shipping Timeline
Now that printing is underway on The EGM Compendium, we’re finally able to share a specific timeline reflecting the latest dates from our production and distribution partners. We wanted to pass those along to you so you have a clearer expectation of when your book (and other rewards will arrive in the mail).
Production on all physical rewards is expected to be completed by July 27th. Your orders will be shipped from the printer to our fulfillment center by August 3rd and be received at the fulfillment center by September 7th. Orders will then begin mailing to you by September 14th. Your orders will be shipped via the U.S. Postal Service from the West Coast of the United States. From that point, the amount of time it will take to arrive to you will vary based on your location.
Depending on your backer tier you may get more than one package from us to fulfill your rewards. This is because certain mailing classes are faster than others and we’re taking advantage of this fact. But there are limits on what can be included in these packages, so things that are not printed material (like the books and magazines) will have to go in a separate mailing. We’ll give you more details on this when shipments begin.
We know you’ve all been extremely patient, and we continue to appreciate that. We’ll continue working with our partners to speed up processes when and where that’s possible. We’ll share any further updates as we have them.
EGM #265
With The EGM Compendium off in the printer’s capable hands, we’ve been able to fully turn our attention to one of our most exciting stretch goals: an entirely new and special issue of the magazine. We want you to be surprised (and, if we do our jobs right, delighted) by EGM #265, so we won’t go into too much detail or post any preview pages today. But now that we’re entering the final stages of our work on the magazine, we did want to reveal some of the effort we’re putting toward this bonus reward.
EGM #265 will clock in at 100 pages, and while this is far from the numbers the magazine put up in its heyday, there’s one important difference. Unlike those original-run issues, #265 will, with the exception of the inside covers and back cover, not feature any ads. In other words, 95 of those pages will be actual content.
Across those pages, we’ve given EGM a brand-new redesign, deeply inspired by its history but refreshed to match modern expectations. Our goal was to make the magazine we’d be putting out today if we never stopped publishing. Don’t worry—we also worked hard to preserve the visual personality that made EGM fun to read throughout every era.
Putting together an entire redesigned magazine with just two editors would be an enormous lift. Good thing, then, that we’ve got some the best help in gaming history. More than two dozen former EGM editors and contributors have participated in the issue. (We’ve also enlisted the help of some other recognizable names from elsewhere in the world of gaming, so expect a few surprises on that front.)
In terms of the content itself, we’ve pushed to include sections and features from EGM’s entire history, mashed up into a suitably history-spanning format: Press Start, Five Lives, Take This Job, Gaming Gossip (featuring Quartermann, obviously), Trickman Terry’s Tricks of the Trade, the Gamer’s Choice Awards, the EGM Interview, Next Wave, Under the Radar, a cover story (even if our actual cover is our extra-special foldout art), the crossword, Grudge Match, EGM Retro, The Rest of the Crap, Commentary, and a Final World/EGM Roundtable hybrid, featuring editors spanning nearly the whole history of EGM. Oh, and we certainly didn’t forget about the Review Crew. We’ll bring you reviews of 29 games, 23 of which are in EGM’s classic three-person format.
Putting together this special issue of EGM has been a dream come true for us. We can’t wait for you to read it. As a reminder, every backer will get a digital copy of EGM #265. Everyone who purchased a physical copy of The EGM Compendium will get a print edition of the magazine along with their book.
That’s it for this update! Thanks again for all the love and patience you’ve shown and know that our small but dedicated team has been working hard to get this to you as fast as we possibly can. The wait is almost over!
The EGM Compendium Is Ready to Print!
2 months ago
– Tue, Apr 28, 2026 at 03:02:18 PM
Update on The EGM Compendium
We've received our updated test copies of The EGM Compendium, fresh from the printer. As you may recall from a previous update, the initial test printing revealed a few errors we wanted to correct before we began the full print run. We’ve confirmed that our revisions have been implemented. That means The EGM Compendium is officially ready to print.
The printer has added the book to its schedule to begin full printing and assembly of all your physical copies in May. We anticipate this process will take around 30 days to complete. Once printing is complete, your orders will be shipped to our fulfillment partner, where they will be forwarded along to you. We’ll share updates on timing as we proceed through these last few steps. But really, this is it! The wait is almost over.
Check Your Address Before It Locks
We’ll need to lock addresses on BackerKit in advance of printing. (BackerKit requires locked addresses to process manual exports for fulfillment, which we’ll use to verify our final counts and link each order to a unique ID to speed up packing and fulfillment.) We’re setting a deadline of a little over one week from today to make any necessary changes to your address. We will be locking addresses the evening of Wednesday, May 6th, U.S. time.
If you need to update your address, you can do so yourself in the BackerKit survey, which you can access by entering the email address associated with your pledge at https://EGMCompendium.backerkit.com.
Photos of Other Rewards
In addition to the new test prints of the book, we’ve also received samples of some of the other physical rewards that backers will receive, and we wanted to share some photos with you.
Here’s a look at the nine Review Crew bookmarks every physical backer will receive with their copy of the book:
EGM #265 with the special fold-out cover (though the inside’s not done yet!):
The silver-foil slipcase:
The standard size poster:
EGM #237, the "Lost Issue":
Cast Your Vote One Last Time
We’ll share more about what we’re working on for EGM #265 in future updates, but there is one feature in the issue we need your help with now. Previously, we asked you to vote on your favorite games of 2024 for inclusion in EGM #265. Given the timing of the new issue, it only made sense to also include your voting for the 2025 Game of the Year, too. So head on over and give us your vote.
Thanks again for all your support.
The EGM Compendium’s Archive Code Pages Are Now Live
4 months ago
– Sun, Mar 15, 2026 at 10:09:04 AM
Hello again to all our backers! The printer is at work on the new test print copies of the book. We’ll share more on the full production run as soon as we can.
In the meantime, we’re excited to be delivering even more content to you today, as the EGM Archive pages corresponding to the Archive Codes in The EGM Compendium are now live. If you’ve been reading the book digitally, you can now check out the extra content associated with these codes. If you’re waiting for your physical copy, know that the codes will be functional once it arrives.
We had two main goals for these tie-in pages. The first was to make it easier for readers with a paid EGM Archive membership to access coverage of topics and games in the original magazine issues. But we were also mindful of the fact that not everyone signed up for full Archive access, which prompted our second goal: offering bonus content to expand on the material in the book. We thought of this stuff like DVD special features—fun, optional content for diving a little deeper into topics from the book. You can expect extended interviews, expanded content, added context, and at least one flatulent robot.
To access these pages, all you need to do is enter the codes found throughout the book at EGMCompendium.com—just click the magnifying glass icon on the top navbar, then enter the code into the box.
For the moment, you will need to be logged into your EGM Archive account, but as a reminder, every single backer is eligible for an account at the free tier. (If you haven’t registered your account yet, you can find the code in the Digital Downloads section of your BackerKit survey, which is always accessible by entering your email at egmcompendium.backerkit.com.)
We’ll be back soon with more updates.
The EGM Compendium: Now with Fewer Errors!
4 months ago
– Tue, Mar 03, 2026 at 02:33:19 PM
Hello, and thanks again to the best, most patient backers on Kickstarter!
When we last updated you, we showed off physical copies of The EGM Compendium from the test print, and told you’d we’d be reviewing them closely to ensure that the final book would print at the quality we envisioned. That meant looking over literally every inch of every page under bright direct light to make sure everything looked correct, and noting anything that might be even a little off so we could ensure it would be fixed up for the final print run.
During that process, we did in fact discover some issues that required attention. Most notable and widespread, how we’d built our pages wasn’t quite cooperating with the prepress workflow for handling overprinting. In layman’s terms, sometimes you want the black ink to print on top of the other colors—overprinting—and sometimes you don’t. In our test print copies, blacks were always printing on top of other colors—even when the black was on top of elements that shouldn’t have been visible.
Here an image showing what we mean, from page 274 of the book:
You’ll notice in direct light that the black box on the left seems to have a line through it with a different sheen on the top than the bottom. That’s because the bottom portion is overprinted—black on top of orange.
Now, this is not a huge error—odds are good that many of you might not have noticed it under normal reading conditions. But it was obvious enough to those of us who worked on the book that we opted to fix it while we still had the opportunity to do so. Overprinting impacted many of the recurring design elements throughout the book, which meant updating around three-quarters of the pages for this one issue alone.
We also fixed a number of other minor things we discovered when reviewing the printed book, like graphical elements that were slightly misplaced, text that needed small kerning adjustments, and one screenshot that was just a bit too low resolution. So, we booted up the game and recreated our own version to replace it:
(A fun fact that we now hate: The Animal Crossing stage in Super Smash Bros. Brawl has 25 possible configurations, and Dr. Shrunk is only standing there in one of them!)
Again, none of this stuff is major—but with the level of care we’ve tried to put into every aspect of this project, we wanted to make sure we expended every possible effort when it came to translating the book into physical form for you.
To be clear, this process is now entirely done, and the revised files have been delivered to the printer. Given that we’ve got one shot at the full print run, the decision was made to print one more batch of test copies with the final files to verify all our fixes are implemented properly before we give the printer the go-ahead for the full final run.
We expect to verify that these new books look the way we envisioned, and then give the go-ahead to begin printing all 21,000 copies to get them ready to ship out to you. We’ll be back soon to share news of that milestone—and with other updates on some developments related to the new issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine that you made possible.
Also, we’re finishing up work on the special Archive pages that will connect additional content with the book, and will share more on those once they’re live for digital readers to access—we anticipate that will be happening sometime next week. We’ve come up with some fun bonus content that goes beyond simple links to the archival material, and we can’t wait to share.
