Earlier this month, we let you know that if you wanted a video game magazine publication of your very own, then you were in luck, provided you had the cash to put forward.

Now, as the New York Times tells us, someone actually did go in and buy it.

"Obviously, the print media market is a difficult market to be in, and we've been looking for investors to help out with Hardcore Gamer for quite a while," its publisher, Tim Lindquist, said. Hardcore Gamer is the only magazine Mr. Lindquist's company, Doublejump Books, owns; he also publishes gaming guides.

But investors weren't biting, and neither were other publishers.

So Mr. Lindquist posted the magazine on eBay with an asking price of $42,000, based on the profit Hardcore Gamer had made in 2008. Although staff costs are low — all of the employees are contractors and "hardly get any money," Mr. Lindquist said — he decided he was not enough of a businessman to steer the magazine through this poor advertising climate.

"I see people auctioning all kinds of weird stuff on eBay, and they get all kinds of publicity from it," Mr. Lindquist said. "Sometimes people will just bid on an impulse buy, people with a lot of money, and buy a potato chip that's shaped like Jesus for $15,000 just for the publicity of it," he said.

It almost looked like no one was going to buy it, but that's just the nature of eBay, as one hour before the auction's end, someone swept in to save the day. The deal is still being negotiated, and so Lindquist has kept the buyer's identity a secret.

In addition, Lindquist is hopeful he'll be kept on. "It's not exactly a gold mine," he said. "But I really love publishing it."

The guys over at Spong have an interesting take on the news, noting that instead of just pulling the plug after the UGO deal had been made, Ziff Davis should have tried to auction off the now-defunct gaming institution known as Electronic Gaming Monthly.

Maybe if the combined media savvy of Ziff Davis, which has been in publishing since 1927, could have produced an eBay listing, EGM would still be with us today. -- Spong

All in all, this is a rather interesting turn of events, one which should make future developments even more intriguing as any sagging video game magazines in danger of falling off the map may now have a new outlet to save themselves.