IGN just acquired a ton of their competitors

[weirdfeline]

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

Gamer Network’s publications include GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247, and Dicebreaker. The business also holds shares in Outside Xbox, Digital Foundry, and Hookshot (which operates Nintendo life, Push Square, Pure Xbox, and Time Extension).

IGN Entertainment is the division of Ziff Davis that includes IGN, MapGenie, HowLongtoBeat, and Humble Bundle. It has acquired the brands from PAX and New York Comic-Con organizer 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.

I personally check out Push Square, Nintendo Life and Pure Xbox daily. GamesIndustry.biz and Digital Foundry are both pretty important. Eurogamer is pretty big in its own right.

[telekill]

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago. Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned. I know this as I have been temp banned from both sites at some point for expressing a non-hostile conservative opinion.

Where am I going with this, you may be asking... If IGN has bought out their competitors, then there is no great loss. It's simply the consolidation of the same opinion under one banner and this will have zero impact on the readers and those that interact on their sites. That is... until with everything in the gaming industry at the moment... they start to downsize.

[BinaryMessiah]

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago. Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned. I know this as I have been temp banned from both sites at some point for expressing a non-hostile conservative opinion.

Where am I going with this, you may be asking... If IGN has bought out their competitors, then there is no great loss. It's simply the consolidation of the same opinion under one banner and this will have zero impact on the readers and those that interact on their sites. That is... until with everything in the gaming industry at the moment... they start to downsize.

It has nothing to do with being "left leaning". To be honest, most of the top comments on all IGN posts are heavily right leaning. Usually some pretty sick stuff at that. Politics have nothing to do with this consolidation. It's about finances. We're headed towards another 80's game crash. Everything is about profit and pleasing share holders now. Gaming isn't about the art of it anymore. AAA games will implode, and all that will be left are the indie titles that have held the gaming industry up for the last decade. Small gaming sites can no longer thrive like they used to.

[kamikazekeeg]

While I don't read much of any of these, consolidating so many websites like this under one banner can never be a good thing.  I do need to find another gaming site with editorials to read, Destructoid has fallen off real hard lately for me, and otherwise I just check out Gematsu for pure game news.  Sucks to see stuff like this happen, because there's just not many smaller sites anymore, they tend to get bought up and it's questionable how long they'll last, much like game studios who get bought up, just to get shutdown, even if they do things right, or in some cases, relegated into the AAA franchise mines where creativity goes to die.

[telekill]

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago. Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned. I know this as I have been temp banned from both sites at some point for expressing a non-hostile conservative opinion.

Where am I going with this, you may be asking... If IGN has bought out their competitors, then there is no great loss. It's simply the consolidation of the same opinion under one banner and this will have zero impact on the readers and those that interact on their sites. That is... until with everything in the gaming industry at the moment... they start to downsize.

It has nothing to do with being "left leaning". To be honest, most of the top comments on all IGN posts are heavily right leaning. Usually some pretty sick stuff at that. Politics have nothing to do with this consolidation. It's about finances. We're headed towards another 80's game crash. Everything is about profit and pleasing share holders now. Gaming isn't about the art of it anymore. AAA games will implode, and all that will be left are the indie titles that have held the gaming industry up for the last decade. Small gaming sites can no longer thrive like they used to.

You missed what I was trying to convey. These sites all have the same ideals, the same mindset. They're essentially all the same. Now that it's all under one banner... there's been no loss.

[BinaryMessiah]

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago. Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned. I know this as I have been temp banned from both sites at some point for expressing a non-hostile conservative opinion.

Where am I going with this, you may be asking... If IGN has bought out their competitors, then there is no great loss. It's simply the consolidation of the same opinion under one banner and this will have zero impact on the readers and those that interact on their sites. That is... until with everything in the gaming industry at the moment... they start to downsize.

It has nothing to do with being "left leaning". To be honest, most of the top comments on all IGN posts are heavily right leaning. Usually some pretty sick stuff at that. Politics have nothing to do with this consolidation. It's about finances. We're headed towards another 80's game crash. Everything is about profit and pleasing share holders now. Gaming isn't about the art of it anymore. AAA games will implode, and all that will be left are the indie titles that have held the gaming industry up for the last decade. Small gaming sites can no longer thrive like they used to.

You missed what I was trying to convey. These sites all have the same ideals, the same mindset. They're essentially all the same. Now that it's all under one banner... there's been no loss.

I didn't miss your point. Your point is purely political, and there isn't any sort of agenda. The loss is huge. This isn't good for the gaming industry. Every site being under one banner means less trust, more shady back room deals, and a lot of people aren't going to trust any reviews on these sites anymore. IGN already has a bad enough reputation and this is going to seem like the Amazon or Starbucks of the gaming journalism industry. Buying up everybody, monopolizing, and killing trust. But sure, it's all about "leftist" ideas. Whatever that means.

[oldgamerz]

All you need to do is see a brief video of somebody playing any kind of video game and you should know know to play it I run a new YouTube channel under "Oldgamerz Community Links" inside of the "Video Showcase" of this web forum. And, that should give you a hint on how to play some video games but? I do not showcase the controls or spoil the entire video games.

Why read a strategy guide when you could do the game for real?

back in the day they had manuals today that is something of the past but I like to figure  out video games myself in general.

that's just how I am today. But some games I will admit are impossible for me to complete due to glitches or just plain too difficult to play period.

[tripredacus]

The loss is huge. This isn't good for the gaming industry. Every site being under one banner means less trust

IGN has a history of doing this. They purchased/merged with GameSpy and subsequently nuked the Planet sites many years ago. IMO, the online landscape for gaming news went down the toilet back then and not this recent thing.

[bikingjahuty]

IGN hasn't been relevant since 2011. The same can be said for all the big gaming news/review sites that peaked in the early and mid 2000s. They are ran by a bunch of out of touch journalists, who are more concerned with how praising or bashing a game will advance their career and reputation more than how good (or bad) the game actually is. On top of that, there is a major pay to play dynamic with all these major sites, where they are incentived to give specific games higher scores in order to maintain access to events, review copies, and inside connections to benefit their sites. IGN and the rest of the gaming journosphere is corrupt and illegitimate to the core. Anyone who still takes anything IGN says seriously is either incredibly naive or misinformed.


Independent content creators have stolen IGN's lunch for years now, and it's only a matter of time until their irrelevancy catches up with them and they shut down too. Gamespot, Kotaku, and all the other large gaming sites will also suffer the same fate eventually.

[bikingjahuty]

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago. Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned. I know this as I have been temp banned from both sites at some point for expressing a non-hostile conservative opinion.

Where am I going with this, you may be asking... If IGN has bought out their competitors, then there is no great loss. It's simply the consolidation of the same opinion under one banner and this will have zero impact on the readers and those that interact on their sites. That is... until with everything in the gaming industry at the moment... they start to downsize.

I miss gametrailers.com so much it hurts. It was the last breath of fresh air when it came to big gaming news sites, largely because of how much interesting, independent content they hosted. They were really ahead of their time. It's just too bad it didn't end up working out for them. I still rewatch their old reviews from the 2000s and 2010s, and all their great shows like pop-fiction, their retrospectives and countdowns, and some of the other shows they used to host. A lot of people forget that's where AVGN, Pat the Nes Punk, and Screwattack used to primarily host their content.

[kashell]

I don't have a horse in this race. I just wanted to point out that you can't spell ignorant without IGN.

That motto has always made me chuckle.

[nathan776]

I don't feel as if I have ever really engaged with any of these websites significantly for many years at this point. It will be interesting to see what changes are made to the websites or if they will just keep to the status quo. I'd assume a significant downsizing may occur/closures in the short to mid term however.

[telekill]

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago. Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned. I know this as I have been temp banned from both sites at some point for expressing a non-hostile conservative opinion.

Where am I going with this, you may be asking... If IGN has bought out their competitors, then there is no great loss. It's simply the consolidation of the same opinion under one banner and this will have zero impact on the readers and those that interact on their sites. That is... until with everything in the gaming industry at the moment... they start to downsize.

It has nothing to do with being "left leaning". To be honest, most of the top comments on all IGN posts are heavily right leaning. Usually some pretty sick stuff at that. Politics have nothing to do with this consolidation. It's about finances. We're headed towards another 80's game crash. Everything is about profit and pleasing share holders now. Gaming isn't about the art of it anymore. AAA games will implode, and all that will be left are the indie titles that have held the gaming industry up for the last decade. Small gaming sites can no longer thrive like they used to.

You missed what I was trying to convey. These sites all have the same ideals, the same mindset. They're essentially all the same. Now that it's all under one banner... there's been no loss.

I didn't miss your point. Your point is purely political, and there isn't any sort of agenda. The loss is huge. This isn't good for the gaming industry. Every site being under one banner means less trust, more shady back room deals, and a lot of people aren't going to trust any reviews on these sites anymore. IGN already has a bad enough reputation and this is going to seem like the Amazon or Starbucks of the gaming journalism industry. Buying up everybody, monopolizing, and killing trust. But sure, it's all about "leftist" ideas. Whatever that means.

Fair enough. You didn't miss my point. You saw it and ignored it entirely.

If you still have trust in the reviews these sites have then I don't know what to tell you. They haven't been trustworthy... any of them... in at least a decade.

[sly345]

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago.

Was it ever good? Granted my experience with US and British magazines is a bit limited (id did read quite a few PDFs though) but seemingly there were always cases of "Paid Review" (best example: Rise of the Robots, both in Germany and in the UK some magazines handed out suspiciously high ratings), like the Driv3r scandal of Future Press and even back then a lot of these journalists had their agendas, wether it's being a pacifist shitting all over "violent games" or the british overrating each and every football game ever made.
Looking over the ratings, even 30-40 years ago it is baffling what these magazines rated and you can see bias everywhere.
In that regard not much has chaned, only that the bias changed from "I rate genres high i love" or "we take bonuses for ratings" changed to "we're left leaning SJW's who can't tolerate anything but our oppinion".

Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned.

I would argue the worse part is that these so called journalists directly try to push their agendas, directly want to take influence on creative freedom and basically dictate what is ok and what isn't (in their mind). Prime examples are the crying about Stellar Blade or 6 years ago the massive bitching about Kingdom Come: Deliverance's "lack of diversity" and them trying to push Warhorse into adding black NPCs. The Eurogamer review of KC:D is a prime example, as it's obvious the reviewer desperately needs to rate the game badly because of "racism and sexism" but can't flat out say it, so instead he nitpicks minor stuff and thinks a couple bugs are the end of the world

[dhaabi]

While I don't interact with any of the affected news outlets at all, the major takeaway is industry consolidation. In short, competition is good.

Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned.

I would argue the worse part is that these so called journalists directly try to push their agendas, directly want to take influence on creative freedom and basically dictate what is ok and what isn't (in their mind).

Both left and right wing politics have a vocal voice within the industry. While journalism itself may be dominated by the former, there are just as many news coverage and reactionary YouTube channels for the latter, which the argument could be made are just as influential with their respective audiences. If you think one group "directly [tries] to push their agendas" and wants "to take influence on creative freedom and basically dictate what is ok," then you must acknowledge that the statement applies to individuals from both groups, and certainly not all individuals. That is all I have to say on the matter.