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

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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.

Source
(Also check Bellular News - IGN Are Damaging Gaming Thanks to @combatbeard)

7 months ago*

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How do you think this will affect gaming journalism?

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Positively

Negatively

Won't affect

We don't need journalism, we need potatoes.

26 Comments

zeruel132

If a seeming equal in the industry acquires you, that means you were dead already. So will IGN make it worse? Is not existing better? Will a company not doing well have to cut back?

This is the classic result of the average gamer not caring about journalism and a company not doing well in my opinion.

7 months ago

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DecadentHamster

I mean, these are things that can coexist. These acquisitions were probably the only alternative for the respective sites to stay afloat, and simultaneously IGN's policies are going to affect the respective brands negatively. In general, concentrating the market share in a single place is not a good thing for consumers

7 months ago

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zeruel132

Oh of course. The budgets will be slashed and likely practices will change in the company. But that's something that would've happened regardless of IGN's involvement. They could've been bought up by any company and this would've still happened.

Maybe it's just how I read it, but I thought the question had the emphasis of "will it get worse because of IGN", not "will it get worse because of these companies were bought up".

7 months ago

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Mitsukuni

I didn't specifically mean IGN but for generally as monopoly. I think it would affect things differently if they were bought by different competitors. However, getting bought usually has a negative impact because it allegedly changes the expression of journalists.

7 months ago

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DecadentHamster

Ah then, in this sense I agree. IGN isn't a uniquely evil actor or anything. Market concentration harming the consumers' bottom line is a law of economics. Just would be nicer if we had more competition available, that's all

7 months ago

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combatbeard

It's not just about acquiring competitors. Gamer Network is also an advertising network which is used by other independent gaming news sites etc.

Video with better info: Bellular News - IGN Are Damaging Gaming

7 months ago

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Mitsukuni

Thanks, added this to OP.

7 months ago

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Fluffster

I guess concentration of the market is not an issue with any corporation anymore... ?

7 months ago

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Mitsukuni

I think things like this should be an issue for competition authorities. No idea how does this work.

7 months ago

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Fluffster

You'd think it would be, yes. Especially in certain fields like distribution or journalism...
Guess not though.

7 months ago

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wigglenose

i never heard of most of these sites anyway so not going to bother me as I rarely read these sorts of articals anyway

7 months ago

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DrR0Ck

Eurogamer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Digital Foundry are absolutely vital sites. Hoping they aren't terribly compromised by this.

7 months ago

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Ydrisselle

The videos of Outside Xbox and Outside Xtra are also great - we can only hope that they aren't in danger... although I'm pessimistic.

7 months ago

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DrR0Ck

I'd suspect that IGN are more interested in expanding their reach and audience, and less likely to dismantle/compromise quality sites with loyal fans and risk devaluing their investment. They're not venture capital, after all, so I am cautiously optimistic.

7 months ago

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Ydrisselle

Well, they started with firing Deputy Editor Alice Bell from RPS. If you go to their Latest Articles page, find her last published article and start scrolling upwards, there are quite a few very tongue-in-cheek stuff aimed at IGN.

7 months ago

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DrR0Ck

That is unfortunate and does not bode well.

7 months ago

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Skwerm

I can't speak to other countries, but in the US, I would much rather have the anti-trust investigation into Live Nation/Ticketmaster go forward instead of using their finite resources to bust hypothetical Company X for owning more game websites.

Disclosure: Nothing to do with Taylor Swift.

7 months ago

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reigifts

Are there discussions of them prioritizing this specifically over anything related ticket master? I mean to that degree there's more important things than even ticket master so we could find things to prioritize above that. I think the goal is to not let any of these things happen. Reality is by the time enough data is gathered about these companies the ceo's will have taken their money and jumped ship to another company they will do the exact same thing and they wont trace them down and now it's been 40 years so it's whatever. Maybe we should find a way to have infinite resources into these investigations and maybe these processes shouldn't take years but days or weeks. System is in the favor of these people doing this.

7 months ago

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Skwerm

I only mention ticket master because the investigation into their monopoly was just announced officially after the media scooped it.

7 months ago

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Raggart

I don't see how the contraction by acquisition of any type of news market can result in a positive effect for readers / viewers, employees or even society as a whole.

7 months ago

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reigifts

So I guess now we'll see ign's crappy adds on those websites ( not that I visited them anyways ) and we can expect the content to be directed from one main source so it's gonna be dog water. How to kill some websites in 1 big buy I guess?

7 months ago

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caesar239

Too bad, I really like RPS.

7 months ago

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m0r1arty

Games journalism went out of the window over a decade ago. In fact it's almost ten years to the day that the entire problem with games journalism had to be pointed out which turned into an all out culture war which is still ongoing.

7 months ago

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Deleted

This comment was deleted 7 months ago.

7 months ago

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drschnell

So now when somebody is accusing Humble of being cheating assholes who take payment for goods they do not deliver

https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/MA9g7/humble-bundle-easy-going-games-whitethorn-showcase-egs-keys-added-for-recall-the-forest

they can tell the real news story that some customers are just deluded and they did nothing wrong :)