IGN’s Gamer Network Buyout Kills More Jobs and Puts More Eggs in One Basket

I didn’t think the current wave of industry consolidation and layoffs was over after all the companies Embracer and Microsoft bought and dissolved. I just didn’t expect the next big hit to land on the press. I think IGN pretty much just bought most European video game coverage, and the immediate layoffs and past precedents don’t indicate good signs for where all this is going.

What’s so staggering about IGN’s purchase of Gamer Network for me personally is that it affects several of the publications that I’ve come to trust the most over the years: Eurogamer, VG247, GamesIndustry.biz, and Rock Paper Shotgun are all sites I go to either for reliable breaking news or informative analysis.

I don’t think any of these places are going away any time soon, but I never really recovered from when IGN bought 1up.com and eventually gutted it. This might just be the first step on that road for one more of the Gamer Network sites.

I still read some of what IGN publishes, even if I don’t check it as religiously as I did back in the IGN64 days. I still like the site for what it offers, but we need more variety in gaming coverage, not less. Staying employed in this field is already precarious as it is, but the current economic environment is just making it worse. A good friend of mine was affected by the layoffs.

IGN even got pieces of Digital Foundry, Nintendolife, VGC, and Time Extension. When the news first went out, the future of DF was one of the first things I thought about. It doesn’t seem to be in any immediate danger because it’s partially independent, but the thought alone highlights how crucial the outlet’s position is and how fragile the face of game coverage overall can be.

When it comes to technical analysis of video games, DF pretty much stands alone. There are other PC game benchmark sites, but DF has more or less single-handedly changed the conversation regarding criticism of how video game graphics work. Nobody else does what they do quite like they do it. DF would be irreplaceable if we lost it.

Time Extension is another good, unique site that I only recently found out about. It doesn’t just cover retro games, but delivers the latest news impacting how to play retro games on modern hardware. Hopefully IGN’s new partial ownership of it and other sites means that they get more resources in the short term and that we don’t lose another valuable news source in the long term.

The big monolithic sites like IGN, GameSpot, or Polygon are safe for now, but you gotta remember to look out for the smaller, niche, or semi-niche channels. A lot of them focus on specific parts of the industry at an extra level of depth, and some of them might be the sole source of coverage in their chosen area.

Some sites like that have become my main sources for looking up authoritative info on games, and we all suffer when business moves like this put them in danger. Even if they don’t go away immediately, consolidating too many such outlets under one roof raises the risk.