IGN Scoops Up Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, and More (theverge.com) 9
It seems no industry is safe from consolidation, and the latest target is gaming media. From a report: IGN Entertainment has acquired the website portfolio of UK publisher Gamer Network, which operates a number of beloved games-focused publications. That list includes Gamesindustry.biz, Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247, and the tabletop site Dicebreaker. The network also holds shares in sites like Nintendo Life and Digital Foundry.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Gamesindustry.biz reports that "some redundancies" have been made across the sites, though it's not clear how many workers have been impacted. According to several posts on X, editors at both Rock Paper Shotgun and Gamesindustry.biz have been laid off. IGN Entertainment is owned by Ziff Davis, which, in addition to IGN's site, also operates other subsidiaries like Humble Bundle.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Gamesindustry.biz reports that "some redundancies" have been made across the sites, though it's not clear how many workers have been impacted. According to several posts on X, editors at both Rock Paper Shotgun and Gamesindustry.biz have been laid off. IGN Entertainment is owned by Ziff Davis, which, in addition to IGN's site, also operates other subsidiaries like Humble Bundle.
so long then (Score:5, Insightful)
i read rock paper shotgun on occasion and they made actually very cool articles a decade ago, by people passionate about games but who also knew something about making them. they featured many excellent indy titles that would have otherwise gone under the radar. it's been years already that it's just another game "news" aggregator with paid reviews between filler articles. they'll feel very at home with ign.
Re:so long then (Score:4, Insightful)
I like Outside Xbox and Eurogamer, but always felt IGN was too generic and bland. I hope the acquisition doesn't spread the blandness.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope the acquisition doesn't spread the blandness.
Acquisitions always spread the blandness. Seems like companies rarely understand why a company they acquired was successful or of interest to them in the first place and make too many changes to cut costs and reduce overlap in roles that it's difficult if not impossible for things to remain the same.
Re: (Score:1)
Sell all the legacy content to AI farms, sack 95% of the staff, and have the remaining 5% curate new AI articles to extract what's left of the brand value to long-time readers in the form of ad-clicks.
Then sell the empty husk to another sucker. Job done.
Bummer... (Score:2)
IGN is very generic imo and seems to follow whatever it sees as trendy and 'safe' (including politics, culture wars, political correctness, etc.), to get more clicks. They also seem to focus almost solely on large studios and media mega-corps and not a lot on indie/small publishers and studios. I expect Rock Paper Scissors will fall off into generic vanilla oblivion, though I'd be happy to be wrong.
Competition and Markets Authority (Score:1)
This acquisition seems like it will massively reduce competition in the sector of video games journalism and as such I encourage everyone to report it to the Competition and Markets Authority, which you can do here: https://contact-the-cma.service.gov.uk/