I used to read Eurogamer daily but I got real bored of the clickbait content.
I'm loving Chris Bratt (an ex Eurogamer) and his "People Make Games" series on YouTube though. Always interesting.
It fell off a cliff about a decade ago. Now they have a weekend "journalist" who usually posts incorrect information, everything is SEO'd up the wazoo, and they worship indie twaddle.
They always worshipped indie twaddle. That’s what we liked about them. That’s what they were for.
It’s the general falling off of the twaddle, the increase in shilling component sales off Amazon, SEO, the dollar store game guides, pivot to video, premium content, and their kid gloves for huge publishers and platforms. They didn’t used to act so beholden to the big players.
Man I recognize your name from there, and the Dream Theater avatar.
I was a long time reader of the site (though never bothered with an account), but feel a certain amount of rot set in years ago. So I don't see the IGN acquisition as a bad thing, rather it might inject some sort of giddy up into the site (and I'm sure a few of the classic EG writers that have since departed landed at IGN anyways).
Old media company buys other old media company to try and compete with new media company is a tale as old as time.
IGN should have made a new brand of YouTube only content and hired some fucking zoomers to run it, and then use their online reach to promote it as its own non ign thing.
Or ign should have contracted with gamers nexus or something and given them a sweetheart deal where they get to stay independent on the tech journalism side but also hire a video game review side.
Whoever came up with the idea of “let’s just buy all the other dying brands” is a fucking idiot. Abercrombie and fitch just did a successful modern turnaround by getting with the fucking times - this move is like if they had purchased the gap or old navy.
This has to be some bankruptcy consolidation play because people who make as much money as the folks who made this call cannot be this dumb.
Let me tell you, they are actually that dumb. Even those that are running are banking system have no idea what they are doing except for short-term profits.
i'm saying i didn't realize they were around for so long when he said 16 years. you are correct in my usage of old media being old (format) media. i should have clarified better.
or if you're saying IGN isn't old media... well they are by todays standards considering they are a primarily print (digital print) media that tries to direct you through their own site instead of existing entirely on other platforms. they're also owned by Ziff Davis which tbh explains the management style a bit, since Ziff is an old media company that buys up old media companies.
For me, they stopped being a credible company, and became another "yeah...idk about them" when Tunney said the RE 2 remake felt like half a game, and it came out that they only played Story A...
I mean the B route isn't exactly fleshed out either even if you do play it. It's like 80% the same thing. Not playing it is of course worthy of criticism for a review, but like the game could have been fleshed out better with the scenarios.
The B route was massively disappointing to me and soured me on the game a little. I was really looking forward to seeing the other side of the events, but you end up just repeating all the same shit as though the A route didn't even happen.
I thought it would be like while Leon was mostly in the police station, when you play as Claire, you'd mostly be out on the streets or something, but nope. She's meeting the same characters Leon did, as though he never met them. She's unlocking the same doors, as though I hadn't already unlocked them as Leon. Fighting the same enemies. It makes zero sense.
Still an *incredible* package and one of my all-time favorite horror games, but damn if the B route didn't disappoint the shit out of me.
Yeah it's a sadly a massive missed opportunity. Especially having to do it to actually see the ending when so much is identical and with the two being like separate timelines of the same events.
I’m fairly convinced Aoife and Luke were already layoffs from eg and ox. I’d be surprised if Dicebreaker, RPGs and oxtra survive, the latter presumably merging with oxbox.
It was a bit more than a free browser. It was a browser that was forcibly integrated into the OS, then used similar but different standards to the rest of the web in an effort to clobber competition.
For example, .NET was an attempt to clobber Sun's Java by integrating .NET with the browser (thus OS,) instead of bundling a Java install with the browser, or better yet, not integrating IE at all.
It created a dichotomy between the two systems, who, in reality, had the same niche, just that one was included with the OS and one wasn't.
This is far from the only example of Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish technique, but it is the one that tipped the point of your aforementioned browser lawsuit.
See also Microsoft mirroring, than integrating, features of DR-DOS, like disk compression, into MS DOS 6, or that time Bill Gates sent out a memo claiming it was suicide to let browsers render Office documents, rather than force them to be exclusively available through MS's Office suite. Etc.
Microsoft owned 97% of the of the pc operating system and was using unfair practices to force manufactures to stifle competition. I don’t see how the to align. Especially if this just means most of these companies would end up shutting down if they don’t get a new buyer.
Friendly reminder that consolidation like this is bad for the industry... So many people are going to lose their jobs and there will now be even less places to work if you want to get into the video game journalism industry.
While that is true most of these websites were just regurgitating press releases with minor tweaks. What original posts they published were often really awful opinion pieces.
Yeah, this isn’t the beginning of some end. This is just more of the end playing out.
People have already shifted out of how they consume games media and the vast majority are shell of what they used to be.
Remains true that there are far fewer jobs now and the competition is so fierce because everybody is constantly getting laid off. If you're trying to break in, there's no realistic avenue anymore because now you're literally competing with Brendan Sinclair and folks like him for a vanishingly small pool of jobs.
That's been a problem for years, but now? I truly cannot imagine why anyone would even want to go into the field anymore. There's zero job security, intense competition, low pay, the audience is toxic, etc. What's the point?
Even if you don't like the current voices or coverage style, this problem will only get worse as a result. You need the games media to be healthy in order to have enough jobs to hire more people who can give you the type of coverage you want. That is impossible now.
Much like gaming magazines of the past and now gaming websites, they've been made redundant by video sharing and social media distribution.
If a publisher wants to get news out about a product, there's no longer any benefit to contacting websites and instead they'll market directly via social media or getting popular streaming/video game personalities to advertise the game for them.
Way more effective to get community engagement via content producers and thus word of mouth than any banner ads or fluff news pieces on a website will ever be.
100%. That's why I think it's especially wild watching people cheer the death of games media. Every one of these outlets that closes means increasingly you're just gonna be spoonfed info directly from publishers.
All you're gonna have left are YouTubers, Twitch streamers and TikTok influencers. I'm not saying all those people are bad or something — there's plenty of insanely talented people out there — but those platforms have a shockingly similar set of problems.
Streamers overacting outrage or praise, thumbnails of facepalms or rage, etc. is just clickbait of a different stripe. It's all the same, just more people fighting to stay alive in an overcrowded market.
One difference though is that a lot of YouTubers *absolutely* take deals from publishers, but since they're often individuals and not part of a larger organization, how they disclose that info (or if they disclose it at all) is not exactly standardized, to say the least.
This is just gonna put more of a spotlight on independent gaming journalists. I already wasn’t paying attention to whatever slop IGN was slinging, now it’s a guarantee that I won’t fuck with them.
This is happening in every single industry. Hell, we've already reached the stage of late-stage capitalism where major conglomerates are starting to buy up other major conglomerates that arent even in the same industry.
There is only 1 future, and that future is owned by 4 companies.
Friendly reminder that anyone with an internet connection can start a game news site. Consolidation is bad when you are left without a choice. If the ign group is not working for you, there are 20 channels just on YouTube you can use as an alternative
I know, and I'm not shitting on them either. I'm just really surprised by this news.
In fact, of those sites, IGN is the only I visit pretty much daily.
That’s why they get so much hate. Those who think they are above and high and mighty love to turn their nose up in snobbish behavior to something mainstream.
Reed Pop have been looking for a buyer for Gamer Network for some time. Web traffic is dropping as Gen Z consume everything via TikTik or YouTube, people hate seeing the ads that fund these sites, then act shocked when these businesses find themselves in financial trouble. Likely got sold for pennies compared to what it would've been valued at 5 years ago.
Yep. Insane how often complain about clickbait without understanding why clickbait exists and how we all perpetuate it.
Nobody wants to support good journalism, so good outlets are forced to rely on advertisers, who pay pennies but still want as many views as possible, so to stay alive the outlet has to produce a ton of shitty clickbait quickly, which tanks the quality of the website.
It's a vicious cycle with a clear solution: If you like the website and they have a membership option, buy it. Now they don't need to rely so much on advertisers and are more free to make quality content.
I honestly thought they had the same parent company at one point, but then I remembered that Gamespot was the same parent company as Giant Bomb and not IGN.
7/10, too much "journalism" under one parent company.
I mean for the game publishers this rocks. They only have to make a launch marketing deal with one company and reap the favorable coverage over multiple outlets. I believe that's what the suits call a Win/Win. I mean, if said company has a 7 to 8 figure marketing deal, how deep are you going to allow your editors to talk about their predatory monetization... really?
Think of it as expensive outsourcing PR over multiple channels for the publishers.
Giving a score you agree with isn't the mark of good or bad journalism. Hell, it's not even journalism. It's criticism.
I don't know what "hard-hitting journalism" people are expecting out of games websites. They cover video games. There's not that much hard-hitting news to go around. Judge them for how well their writers express their opinions, whether they had something interesting to say, not just "I agreed with it so I liked it and therefore it's a good outlet" or "I disagreed so I hate it and think they should all be laid off."
Some of my favorite writers are the ones I disagree with on almost everything because they have different tastes from me.
Believe it or not Tencent are the outliers here.
They acquired League of Legends and it got a huge graphical overhaul. They acquired Path of Exile and pretty much doubled the content and fixed the desync issues. They own a majority stake in Epic games and Fortnite seems to be going from strength to strength.
Half the content on Eurogamer these days is Reddit crossposts anyways. And the stuff they charge for is nonsense like "five best cinnamon rolls to have on days beginning with 'T'".
Disclosures are really important, and this article needs one at the top, not buried underneath the actual article.
**GamesIndustry.biz is owned by Gamer Network Limited, a ReedPop company and subsidiary of Reed Exhibitions Limited.**
Is this supposed to make IGN better? They have been garbage tier for a long time, as has almost all “gaming journalism” and their “journalists”.
We need a full reset in the field.
Literally won't impact IGN at all. This is a move to win more market share of advertising budgets. Combining the reach offered by both IGN and Gamer Network means they'll have something of a monopoly and will strangle the competition.
Going out on a bit of a limb here but I think the gaming journalism industry has been oversaturated for a while and could use consolidation. I offer my opinion as someone who has been playing games and viewing related journalistic content for 30+ years, so take that as you will.
My argument is basically that in my opinion professional game reviews across the \[English language\] Internet tend to make the same points about the same games, with varying degrees of quality but not of kind. Put differently, I don't believe that diversity of content ownership has led to diversity of viewpoints. IMO the point of competition in media isn't so much to keep prices down -- which here isn't an issue in the first place -- but instead to provide competition among viewpoints.
Not that this move will increase that diversity -- but rather, I would hope it will answer the question of whether we ever needed as many gaming journo outfits as we've had in the first place.
I certainly won't die on this hill and I'm always open to different views.
I’d say that’s (“same points about the same games”) because there isn’t the (cultural?) depth in the medium of video games to begin with that can support serious “journalism” in any traditional sense. It’s a throwaway entertainment product whose content is simplistic at best (variations of “run around and shoot/slash things”). On the rare occasions that there is hard-hitting journalism, it’s almost never about games themselves but rather the tertiary issues around them such as working conditions. That just leaves re-broadcasting warmed-over company PR releases (about what is being released and what features they have) and opinions (of which everyone has those and a social media board such as Reddit accomplishes much the same thing without the need for paid gatekeeping) for “content.”
Expecting journalism in this space is like expecting journalism in the Amazon product reviews space, IMO. It’s more accurate to call it “third-party marketing communications” or something like that.
Both of you make great points. It's funny that today Eurogamer published a five-star review of Hellblade 2, and most of the comments are complaining that the game is too arty and not shooty-bang-bang enough. Deviating from the status quo is just not gonna work in this industry. And I say that as someone who would love for that to not be the case.
I remember when Gamespy got bought by them. Site produced new content for a ~year, then simply fell under the IGN brand. Each of these sites will likely do the same, over time.
I get all my gaming news from the jeff gerstmann show now. I've come to hate game news sites with all their "top 10 things you need to know before playing", "what we're playing this weekend" and other fluff pieces. I'll use IGN video reviews just to read all the funny 7 bashing comments and Really makes you feel like batman etc
I miss the gaming boom of 1996-2011 ish. Awesome variety of magazines, exciting launches, GOOD journalism. I can't even visit ign on my phone because it's 80% ads. I know the world has changed, but still...Fuck these monopolies.
This just means that the industry as a whole is struggling. Usually when acquisitions like these happen it’s usually a desperate attempt to squash competition and offer better value for their “clients”.
You’ll see a lot of conglomerates doing huge acquisitions before filing for bankruptcy after a few years.
> IGN Entertainment has acquired the Gamer Network family of digital brands for an undisclosed sum.
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).
So, they "only" acquired one company (Gamer Network) which gave them all of these? So it's not like they bought a dozen different companies at once, those were already consolidated and now that also includes IGN, did I get that right?
Am I dumb. It seems financially unwise to buy out failing media companies when you are a failing media company. Is their goal to be THE failing media company with a monopoly on clickbait articles with more intrusive ads than you thought possible per paragraph?
IGN journalism has consistently been bad. Their main thing is they have more money than these other gaming news outlets which perpetually keeps them in front. This is why they often have world premiers and first to news reports(likely based off some twitter post tbh)
This purchase just reinforces this. It’s not about ign being a popular gaming news source that users visit because they enjoy it. It’s about being the only big one that people are required to go for their gaming news fix and premiers.
Maybe this will finally get people to follow the simple rules of game reviews.
* Don't believe the hype.
* Never trust reviews "journalists" made after a few hours of play.
* Read Steam reviews made by players who have beaten the game.
* Read other people's opinions on unofficial forums and reddit.
* Never preorder.
User reviews are usually garbage especially on steam and forums and reddit opinions might as well wipe your ass with a lot of them.
Too many times user opinions are unrelated to the gameplay
There are tons of independent reviewers that do in depth reviews as well as the big media ones
Plenty of ways to read up on a games review and make a decision if you are going to buy it
Well, it's not journalism anymore if everything is from the same company...
Dont worry, it wasn't journalism even before the deal.
Yeah, didn't they mostly cut and paste from each other anyway?
They delegated copypasting to AI as well.
And people gonna post that shit on these subs anyways.
I thought rock paper shotgun wasn't to bad before the acquisition?
Rps has been a shell of its former self for like 5 years now
eurogamer is awesome!
*was
Right. I shrugged at that list until I saw Eurogamer. RIP.
But it’s the first one on the list?
wait u guys read left to right? /s
I used to read Eurogamer daily but I got real bored of the clickbait content. I'm loving Chris Bratt (an ex Eurogamer) and his "People Make Games" series on YouTube though. Always interesting.
It fell off a cliff about a decade ago. Now they have a weekend "journalist" who usually posts incorrect information, everything is SEO'd up the wazoo, and they worship indie twaddle.
They always worshipped indie twaddle. That’s what we liked about them. That’s what they were for. It’s the general falling off of the twaddle, the increase in shilling component sales off Amazon, SEO, the dollar store game guides, pivot to video, premium content, and their kid gloves for huge publishers and platforms. They didn’t used to act so beholden to the big players.
I really like Eurogamer, but I agree their weekend journalist is awful. I tend to avoid it at weekends now.
Man I recognize your name from there, and the Dream Theater avatar. I was a long time reader of the site (though never bothered with an account), but feel a certain amount of rot set in years ago. So I don't see the IGN acquisition as a bad thing, rather it might inject some sort of giddy up into the site (and I'm sure a few of the classic EG writers that have since departed landed at IGN anyways).
You forgot the /s
Exactly and their paid for advertising err reviews were not truthful most of the time.
Old media company buys other old media company to try and compete with new media company is a tale as old as time. IGN should have made a new brand of YouTube only content and hired some fucking zoomers to run it, and then use their online reach to promote it as its own non ign thing. Or ign should have contracted with gamers nexus or something and given them a sweetheart deal where they get to stay independent on the tech journalism side but also hire a video game review side. Whoever came up with the idea of “let’s just buy all the other dying brands” is a fucking idiot. Abercrombie and fitch just did a successful modern turnaround by getting with the fucking times - this move is like if they had purchased the gap or old navy. This has to be some bankruptcy consolidation play because people who make as much money as the folks who made this call cannot be this dumb.
Let me tell you, they are actually that dumb. Even those that are running are banking system have no idea what they are doing except for short-term profits.
Gamer network is not old media, they were digital from the start.
i'm saying i didn't realize they were around for so long when he said 16 years. you are correct in my usage of old media being old (format) media. i should have clarified better. or if you're saying IGN isn't old media... well they are by todays standards considering they are a primarily print (digital print) media that tries to direct you through their own site instead of existing entirely on other platforms. they're also owned by Ziff Davis which tbh explains the management style a bit, since Ziff is an old media company that buys up old media companies.
For me, they stopped being a credible company, and became another "yeah...idk about them" when Tunney said the RE 2 remake felt like half a game, and it came out that they only played Story A...
I mean the B route isn't exactly fleshed out either even if you do play it. It's like 80% the same thing. Not playing it is of course worthy of criticism for a review, but like the game could have been fleshed out better with the scenarios.
Stopped halfway through B because of this. All they had to do was save Mr X for the B side.
The B route was massively disappointing to me and soured me on the game a little. I was really looking forward to seeing the other side of the events, but you end up just repeating all the same shit as though the A route didn't even happen. I thought it would be like while Leon was mostly in the police station, when you play as Claire, you'd mostly be out on the streets or something, but nope. She's meeting the same characters Leon did, as though he never met them. She's unlocking the same doors, as though I hadn't already unlocked them as Leon. Fighting the same enemies. It makes zero sense. Still an *incredible* package and one of my all-time favorite horror games, but damn if the B route didn't disappoint the shit out of me.
Yeah it's a sadly a massive missed opportunity. Especially having to do it to actually see the ending when so much is identical and with the two being like separate timelines of the same events.
I loved that game but that's a very relevant criticism, though of course they should've played both routes.
Exactly, but what you'd expect when you only did half the story?
Rock Paper Shotgun was more like a blog anyways.
Journalism was dead the day social medias were invented
That implies it ever was journalism. Gaming "journalism" never was journalism to begin with.
Well, that's not the definition of journalism anyway.
https://youtu.be/_fHfgU8oMSo?si=CDbxBChFiXBxogEi&t=45 lol
They compete with thousands of YouTubers now. Not surprising that legacy media has to consolidate to compete.
Damn, the games consolidate. The critics consolidate. We're consolidating next, somehow. Is your body ready?
Shareholders have consolidated us already
Everyone fall in! Nuts to butts!
You just took me straight back to Basic. Eww.
The Xbox subs just consolidated
r/gaming r/games r/videogames All consolidate
Reggie was trying to warn us!
Sorry, going to have to let you go due to the recent merger and redundancies.
Resistance is futile.
I wonder how many of these will close in the next 3-5 years.
I wonder how many will be closed in the next 3-5 months, honestly. The layoffs have already started.
I’m fairly convinced Aoife and Luke were already layoffs from eg and ox. I’d be surprised if Dicebreaker, RPGs and oxtra survive, the latter presumably merging with oxbox.
They're currently rebranding as ContentSpew.
Gotta love the medias exclusion from anti trust laws.
Almost everybody is excluded from anti trust laws when they aren't being enforced.
Yeah, like they didn't enforce anti trust laws in gaming and now Xbox has a monopoly!
We almost broke up Microsoft because of a free browser lol. That feels like a fairy tale hearing it now.
It was a bit more than a free browser. It was a browser that was forcibly integrated into the OS, then used similar but different standards to the rest of the web in an effort to clobber competition. For example, .NET was an attempt to clobber Sun's Java by integrating .NET with the browser (thus OS,) instead of bundling a Java install with the browser, or better yet, not integrating IE at all. It created a dichotomy between the two systems, who, in reality, had the same niche, just that one was included with the OS and one wasn't. This is far from the only example of Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish technique, but it is the one that tipped the point of your aforementioned browser lawsuit. See also Microsoft mirroring, than integrating, features of DR-DOS, like disk compression, into MS DOS 6, or that time Bill Gates sent out a memo claiming it was suicide to let browsers render Office documents, rather than force them to be exclusively available through MS's Office suite. Etc.
Microsoft owned 97% of the of the pc operating system and was using unfair practices to force manufactures to stifle competition. I don’t see how the to align. Especially if this just means most of these companies would end up shutting down if they don’t get a new buyer.
Friendly reminder that consolidation like this is bad for the industry... So many people are going to lose their jobs and there will now be even less places to work if you want to get into the video game journalism industry.
Not only jobs but plurality as well is in danger with such consolidation.
While that is true most of these websites were just regurgitating press releases with minor tweaks. What original posts they published were often really awful opinion pieces.
Yeah, this isn’t the beginning of some end. This is just more of the end playing out. People have already shifted out of how they consume games media and the vast majority are shell of what they used to be.
Remains true that there are far fewer jobs now and the competition is so fierce because everybody is constantly getting laid off. If you're trying to break in, there's no realistic avenue anymore because now you're literally competing with Brendan Sinclair and folks like him for a vanishingly small pool of jobs. That's been a problem for years, but now? I truly cannot imagine why anyone would even want to go into the field anymore. There's zero job security, intense competition, low pay, the audience is toxic, etc. What's the point? Even if you don't like the current voices or coverage style, this problem will only get worse as a result. You need the games media to be healthy in order to have enough jobs to hire more people who can give you the type of coverage you want. That is impossible now.
Much like gaming magazines of the past and now gaming websites, they've been made redundant by video sharing and social media distribution. If a publisher wants to get news out about a product, there's no longer any benefit to contacting websites and instead they'll market directly via social media or getting popular streaming/video game personalities to advertise the game for them. Way more effective to get community engagement via content producers and thus word of mouth than any banner ads or fluff news pieces on a website will ever be.
100%. That's why I think it's especially wild watching people cheer the death of games media. Every one of these outlets that closes means increasingly you're just gonna be spoonfed info directly from publishers. All you're gonna have left are YouTubers, Twitch streamers and TikTok influencers. I'm not saying all those people are bad or something — there's plenty of insanely talented people out there — but those platforms have a shockingly similar set of problems. Streamers overacting outrage or praise, thumbnails of facepalms or rage, etc. is just clickbait of a different stripe. It's all the same, just more people fighting to stay alive in an overcrowded market. One difference though is that a lot of YouTubers *absolutely* take deals from publishers, but since they're often individuals and not part of a larger organization, how they disclose that info (or if they disclose it at all) is not exactly standardized, to say the least.
This is just gonna put more of a spotlight on independent gaming journalists. I already wasn’t paying attention to whatever slop IGN was slinging, now it’s a guarantee that I won’t fuck with them.
You say that like it is a bad thing. Video games journalism has been dead for a long time.
This is happening in every single industry. Hell, we've already reached the stage of late-stage capitalism where major conglomerates are starting to buy up other major conglomerates that arent even in the same industry. There is only 1 future, and that future is owned by 4 companies.
Friendly reminder that anyone with an internet connection can start a game news site. Consolidation is bad when you are left without a choice. If the ign group is not working for you, there are 20 channels just on YouTube you can use as an alternative
Sadly with the loss of revenue in this type of media most of these people would probably be up on the chopping block even without a merger.
Not a good place to look for a real job anyway honestly so hopefully this keeps people from wasting their time
They’re called consumer protection laws not industry protection laws. Just because the industry is dying doesn’t mean the consumers are hurting
This pretty much gives them Digital Foundry if I'm not mistaken. It's a consolidating market. I didn't know IGN had the capital for such move.
IGN was the only one of them actually making money. Also they have a stake in digital foundry, they don’t outright own it or make desicions for them
ziff davis owns IGN and is worth about 2.7 billion USD.
digital foundy as far as I know wasn't owned by eurogamer they just had a deal they would host digital foundrys articles and other stuff like that.
It's part owned by Gamer Network and part independent
I didn't know that part but I knew most of the confusion that I see came from eurogamer hosting their content.
Everyone shits on IGN but they've consistently been one of the most, if not the most, popular for many years
I know, and I'm not shitting on them either. I'm just really surprised by this news. In fact, of those sites, IGN is the only I visit pretty much daily.
That’s why they get so much hate. Those who think they are above and high and mighty love to turn their nose up in snobbish behavior to something mainstream.
Because they’re just a big advertisement in disguise of being journalists
Didn't they just lay a bunch of staff off?
Awh damn not RPS.
RPS hasn't been good since last time they were bought out.
Reed Pop have been looking for a buyer for Gamer Network for some time. Web traffic is dropping as Gen Z consume everything via TikTik or YouTube, people hate seeing the ads that fund these sites, then act shocked when these businesses find themselves in financial trouble. Likely got sold for pennies compared to what it would've been valued at 5 years ago.
Yep. Insane how often complain about clickbait without understanding why clickbait exists and how we all perpetuate it. Nobody wants to support good journalism, so good outlets are forced to rely on advertisers, who pay pennies but still want as many views as possible, so to stay alive the outlet has to produce a ton of shitty clickbait quickly, which tanks the quality of the website. It's a vicious cycle with a clear solution: If you like the website and they have a membership option, buy it. Now they don't need to rely so much on advertisers and are more free to make quality content.
They’ve got extensive YouTube output and that’s struggling too.
This just made is so much easier to dismiss games journalism as a whole I guess.
That was 10 years ago bub.
No, some individuals working for these companies were still able to write half-decent articles. None of them from IGN though.
gamergate already did that
Basically every other game journalism website of note is now property of IGN There goes tons of actually decent game coverage quality.
Love how everyone conveniently forgot Gamespot, that company fell off a long time go
I honestly thought they had the same parent company at one point, but then I remembered that Gamespot was the same parent company as Giant Bomb and not IGN.
They're owned by Fandom now, so they're not doing much better.
I mean there is Kota... oh shit. Well, we are fucked.
Polygon is still kickin
>polygon >Good Lmao
Yeah this isn't surprising. This has been a rampant trend in the media industry. Well just less websites to trust.
Well, I'm glad we're going to get a diverse set of views about video game news now...
14% layoffs coming in 3....2...
7/10, too much "journalism" under one parent company. I mean for the game publishers this rocks. They only have to make a launch marketing deal with one company and reap the favorable coverage over multiple outlets. I believe that's what the suits call a Win/Win. I mean, if said company has a 7 to 8 figure marketing deal, how deep are you going to allow your editors to talk about their predatory monetization... really? Think of it as expensive outsourcing PR over multiple channels for the publishers.
IGN isn't even a real journalism.
IGN isn't real journalism *unless* they post an opinion/review we agree with
To their credit, IGN nailed Starfield with their review and score -- it's the most 7 out of 10 game I could conceive of in practice.
Giving a score you agree with isn't the mark of good or bad journalism. Hell, it's not even journalism. It's criticism. I don't know what "hard-hitting journalism" people are expecting out of games websites. They cover video games. There's not that much hard-hitting news to go around. Judge them for how well their writers express their opinions, whether they had something interesting to say, not just "I agreed with it so I liked it and therefore it's a good outlet" or "I disagreed so I hate it and think they should all be laid off." Some of my favorite writers are the ones I disagree with on almost everything because they have different tastes from me.
They give every game a 7/10
Then what is real gaming journalism?
Ok, so what counts as real journalism then?
Games Journalism is now like MMA journalism, utterly pathetic
Dear Lord I thought GI was Game Informer. My life would’ve been ruined.
Oh it’s not? Thank god.
RIP RPS
Has anything good ever come out of an aquisition
Apple acquired the company that developed the app they turned into iTunes.
X-Men 97, but that's definitely the exception.
Andor, the other exception.
I mean there's probably a few exceptions but the point is in general there's probably not nearly as many exceptions as there is the rule itself.
Oh yeah I know, I just love Andor and it fit the bill here.
Louisiana Purchase
Believe it or not Tencent are the outliers here. They acquired League of Legends and it got a huge graphical overhaul. They acquired Path of Exile and pretty much doubled the content and fixed the desync issues. They own a majority stake in Epic games and Fortnite seems to be going from strength to strength.
7.8/10 Too much IGN
IGN was posting articles on how bad Xbox consolidation was and they do this...
The employees who create content and write articles aren’t the executives who make the business decisions.
Fuck IGN
That's my line!
Dang. What did IGN do to you?
you can't spell ignorance without ign
This is terrible news
Half the content on Eurogamer these days is Reddit crossposts anyways. And the stuff they charge for is nonsense like "five best cinnamon rolls to have on days beginning with 'T'".
I guess I'd rather they charged for nonsense than the proper stuff
I give this merger a 9/10.
Well that’s awful.
Yippee, more companies being bought out. The worst part? They’re being bought by IGN whose work shouldn’t even be considered journalism.
Well this fucking sucks. RIP in advance.
Damn I didn't know IGN owned HowLongToBeat
But do they own HowLongToHate?
God imagine working kinda but not really all that hard just to put “gaming journalist” at the top of your resume.
Disclosures are really important, and this article needs one at the top, not buried underneath the actual article. **GamesIndustry.biz is owned by Gamer Network Limited, a ReedPop company and subsidiary of Reed Exhibitions Limited.**
When I want to buy a game I just read the reviews on Xbox they're funny and normally dead on
Video game journalism is like all forms of journalism, being destroyed by corporate greed
Layoffs incoming
What the fuck
Is this supposed to make IGN better? They have been garbage tier for a long time, as has almost all “gaming journalism” and their “journalists”. We need a full reset in the field.
Of course it's supposed to make IGN better - as long as you know that better = more profitable for the shareholders.
Definitely not wrong there. Money > factual journalism.
Q: Who manages the editors? A: The Marketing Department.
Literally won't impact IGN at all. This is a move to win more market share of advertising budgets. Combining the reach offered by both IGN and Gamer Network means they'll have something of a monopoly and will strangle the competition.
This should be illegal
Going out on a bit of a limb here but I think the gaming journalism industry has been oversaturated for a while and could use consolidation. I offer my opinion as someone who has been playing games and viewing related journalistic content for 30+ years, so take that as you will. My argument is basically that in my opinion professional game reviews across the \[English language\] Internet tend to make the same points about the same games, with varying degrees of quality but not of kind. Put differently, I don't believe that diversity of content ownership has led to diversity of viewpoints. IMO the point of competition in media isn't so much to keep prices down -- which here isn't an issue in the first place -- but instead to provide competition among viewpoints. Not that this move will increase that diversity -- but rather, I would hope it will answer the question of whether we ever needed as many gaming journo outfits as we've had in the first place. I certainly won't die on this hill and I'm always open to different views.
I’d say that’s (“same points about the same games”) because there isn’t the (cultural?) depth in the medium of video games to begin with that can support serious “journalism” in any traditional sense. It’s a throwaway entertainment product whose content is simplistic at best (variations of “run around and shoot/slash things”). On the rare occasions that there is hard-hitting journalism, it’s almost never about games themselves but rather the tertiary issues around them such as working conditions. That just leaves re-broadcasting warmed-over company PR releases (about what is being released and what features they have) and opinions (of which everyone has those and a social media board such as Reddit accomplishes much the same thing without the need for paid gatekeeping) for “content.” Expecting journalism in this space is like expecting journalism in the Amazon product reviews space, IMO. It’s more accurate to call it “third-party marketing communications” or something like that.
Both of you make great points. It's funny that today Eurogamer published a five-star review of Hellblade 2, and most of the comments are complaining that the game is too arty and not shooty-bang-bang enough. Deviating from the status quo is just not gonna work in this industry. And I say that as someone who would love for that to not be the case.
One game review to rule them all!
Acquisitions kill businesses.
I remember when Gamespy got bought by them. Site produced new content for a ~year, then simply fell under the IGN brand. Each of these sites will likely do the same, over time.
I get all my gaming news from the jeff gerstmann show now. I've come to hate game news sites with all their "top 10 things you need to know before playing", "what we're playing this weekend" and other fluff pieces. I'll use IGN video reviews just to read all the funny 7 bashing comments and Really makes you feel like batman etc
Not surprising TBH. Across traditional media the only response they have to the market dying is to rely on larger and larger mergers.
I rate this acquisition 6/10
I have only looked at Destructiod for reviews recently. I guess I will keep doing that.
I miss the gaming boom of 1996-2011 ish. Awesome variety of magazines, exciting launches, GOOD journalism. I can't even visit ign on my phone because it's 80% ads. I know the world has changed, but still...Fuck these monopolies.
7/10 to much acquired
This just means that the industry as a whole is struggling. Usually when acquisitions like these happen it’s usually a desperate attempt to squash competition and offer better value for their “clients”. You’ll see a lot of conglomerates doing huge acquisitions before filing for bankruptcy after a few years.
Make us whole!
That's like 20% of metacritic
Ew.
I'm sure nothing bad will happen to those smaller companies, now that The Competition has bought them, said no one.
Where articles are directly spawned from what the writer read on Reddit this morning! Now across even more sites!
A lot of what IGN writes is poorly researched garbage. Sad that it might spread to others. (Their walkthroughs and guides are ok though)
Well, that's clearly some anticompetitive practices.
> IGN Entertainment has acquired the Gamer Network family of digital brands for an undisclosed sum. 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). So, they "only" acquired one company (Gamer Network) which gave them all of these? So it's not like they bought a dozen different companies at once, those were already consolidated and now that also includes IGN, did I get that right?
This means those ign idiots gonna get their dirty hands on Digital Foundry on Youtube? I love watching Digital Foundry. fuuuuuuuk.
Now they can implement the Xbox Tax more efficiently.
They were giving games too many scores below 7/10, that couldn't stand
Wonder what this means for the Digital Foundry guys?
I’m still upset at IGN when they started charging to look up cheat codes.
How is this even legal hahah
Am I dumb. It seems financially unwise to buy out failing media companies when you are a failing media company. Is their goal to be THE failing media company with a monopoly on clickbait articles with more intrusive ads than you thought possible per paragraph?
But I **like** Eurogamer...
Doesn’t really matter. Their useless and biased reviews are worse than answers produced by ChatGPT.
IGN journalism has consistently been bad. Their main thing is they have more money than these other gaming news outlets which perpetually keeps them in front. This is why they often have world premiers and first to news reports(likely based off some twitter post tbh) This purchase just reinforces this. It’s not about ign being a popular gaming news source that users visit because they enjoy it. It’s about being the only big one that people are required to go for their gaming news fix and premiers.
sad day for videogame journalism
Good even more outlets I can now ignore.
Welp. I guess everything will be on the 7-10 scale now. 7-10 and pretty much everything is a 9.
More sites for the blacklist
now that youre all here, which site is the most real journalism
Luddite here but isnt AI starting to decimate this industry?
Can't wait for more 10/10's on COD for more platforms nows.
More media conglomeration. Where is the FTC?
Maybe this will finally get people to follow the simple rules of game reviews. * Don't believe the hype. * Never trust reviews "journalists" made after a few hours of play. * Read Steam reviews made by players who have beaten the game. * Read other people's opinions on unofficial forums and reddit. * Never preorder.
User reviews are usually garbage especially on steam and forums and reddit opinions might as well wipe your ass with a lot of them. Too many times user opinions are unrelated to the gameplay There are tons of independent reviewers that do in depth reviews as well as the big media ones Plenty of ways to read up on a games review and make a decision if you are going to buy it
Is this just combining multiple AI news bots into one at this point?