IGN Entertainment acquires Eurogamer, GI, VG247, Rock Paper Shotgun and more

via GamesIndustry.biz

IGN Entertainment has acquired the Gamer Network family of digital brands for an undisclosed sum.

As a result of the acquisition, some redundancies have been made across the UK-based organisation.

Gamer Network’s publications are GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer (including six local language editions), Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247 and Dicebreaker. The business also holds shares in Outside Xbox, Digital Foundry and Hookshot (which operates Nintendolife, PushSquare, PureXbox and Time Extension).

IGN Entertainment is the division of Ziff Davis that includes IGN, MapGenie, HowLongToBeat, and Humble Bundle. It has acquired the websites from PAX and New York Comic-Con organiser ReedPop, which initially bought the Gamer Network business in 2018.

Not included in the sale are UK-based events EGX or MCM, or the digital brand Popverse, which remain with ReedPop.

Traditional gaming media is even more of a hellscape than game making in terms of employment. Then only reason that we hear less about it is that there are so few outlets left and those that are left are often running skeleton crews.

I feel very bad for the people losing their jobs and likely exiting the industry because of corporate bullshit. I haven't been to IGN in a very long time except for very specific purposes (like reading old reviews to get a sense for contemporary reception for an old game) and it's trying to be the only outlet left standing.

Thankfully they only partially own Digital Foundry but this is a grim day.

*screaming into void intensifies*

This fucking sucks. Further cements the brain drain of games media, where people laid off will just never re-enter the ecosystem and public voices are irrevocably lost. Ziff Davis is a blight on the world.

Partial glimmer of hope is that Richard Leadbetter still is a majority stakeholder in DF, and several editors at VGC have pointed out that while that site operates in association with Gamer Network/ZiffDavis, they are actually entirely independent:

I'll never understand the process of acquiring a bunch of companies and then setting about gutting it's staff i.e. what makes the company what it is.

Fascinating that none of the websites have mentioned this in an official capacity yet.

God, this sucks. I'm a pretty big fan of some of the ign podcasts. I'm going to have to work really hard to separate them from their leadership. I wonder what Peer would have to say about all this (but probably he'll keep his mouth shut.)

@creepingdeath0: I'm not a financial expert, but it seems to be a sleezy way to increase their bottom line by the end of the year. Many of those companies that acquired and then shut down seem to report record profits. So they basically are buying and selling, and while doing, so disrupting a lot of people's lives.

@creepingdeath0: In many cases it's about acquiring something specific that the company that ends up being gutted has, such as a technology or IP. In others it's a desire to wring money out of a loyal audience over a short period of time, since there's a delay between cost cutting and losing your audience.

Here if one wanted to be cynical one might say it's about putting the competition out of business.

Starting to feel like the gaming industry is intensely shrinking.

@finaldasa: Or at the very least, becoming intensely splintered. I'm starting to think the Nextlander boys might have figured out the best modern-day formula for keeping a group of games insiders together, but man, do I hate to see the death of the traditional games sites.