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It's not only game publishers that have been consolidating their power buying up lots of developers and other publishers, it's also happening in gaming media with IGN buying up the Gamer Network.

This means IGN Entertainment now control GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247, and Dicebreaker. They also hold shares in Outside Xbox, Digital Foundry, and Hookshot (which operates Nintendo life, Push Square, Pure Xbox, and Time Extension). They were purchased for an "undisclosed sum".

IGN didn't say in their own news post on it but right away they fired a bunch of people, as confirmed by GamesIndustry.biz in their article as they noted "As a result of the acquisition, some redundancies have been made across the UK-based organisation.".


As for why they are doing this? Well, the internet sucks right now.

More websites are employing the use of AI, pushing out actual people. Spamming search engines, which pushes down everyone else and it's only going to get worse as AI is pushed more and more. This feels like IGN ensuring people come to them, as eventually the only sites that may be able to weather the AI storm are those that are just too big to fall.

It's just another reminder to directly support those you find useful and whose content you enjoy.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc
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21 comments
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Bogomips May 22
I have seen the offers from Bluesky and Mastodon posts for GamingOnLinux I will raise with a banofee pie to the 5 canadian dollars and the pizza, final offer.


Last edited by Bogomips on 22 May 2024 at 9:51 am UTC
blindcoder May 22
More consolidation, less diversity, more of the same-same everywhere.
Really makes me want to support GoL directly. Oh wait... I JUST STARTED DOING THAT!
based May 22
GOL literally the only news website I actually follow, stay awesome guys!


Last edited by based on 22 May 2024 at 10:05 am UTC
Mungrul May 22
Somewhat ominously, RPS hasn't seen an update for 23 hours now, in the middle of a working week. Not boding well.
Brisse May 22
That's a couple of my regularly visited bookmarks deleted from my browser then. RIP.
dindon May 22
Yet another encouragement to pay for the internet that you want.
grigi May 22
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Do you have alternative donation platforms than Patreon or once-off paypal?
I honestly don't care about the rewards, I just want as much of my money to arrive at you Liam. (As in the minimum charges).

I'm asking because Patreon has been in the news for taking what many people think is an unfair percentage of fees.
Liam Dawe May 22
Quoting: grigiDo you have alternative donation platforms than Patreon or once-off paypal?
I honestly don't care about the rewards, I just want as much of my money to arrive at you Liam. (As in the minimum charges).

I'm asking because Patreon has been in the news for taking what many people think is an unfair percentage of fees.
Nope. Every additional platform is more admin/tax work for me. Paypal and Patreon keep it simple and I am personally happy with both.
Drakker May 22
Oh yeah, those sites ring a bell. I think I used to read them like 20 years ago. I'm surprised to learn they still exist after all this time putting out awful content.
ToddL May 22
I'm glad sites like GamingOnLinux exist because IGN is one of the worse when it comes to reporting gaming news but the crazy thing is that they also own Humble Bundle, which is hit or miss and many still miss the days prior to their acquisition.
grigi May 22
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Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: grigiDo you have alternative donation platforms than Patreon or once-off paypal?
I honestly don't care about the rewards, I just want as much of my money to arrive at you Liam. (As in the minimum charges).

I'm asking because Patreon has been in the news for taking what many people think is an unfair percentage of fees.
Nope. Every additional platform is more admin/tax work for me. Paypal and Patreon keep it simple and I am personally happy with both.

Cool, so which one should I setup? The one that charges you less fees?
Liam Dawe May 22
Either is fine really, PayPal probably has less fees, especially good if you're not bothered about any special status.
Lachu May 22
I think many of fired people will create new studios, which will be bought and their employer will be fired again. ;-D
Linux_Rocks May 22
I like Eurogamer, Digital Foundry, and Time Extension too. While IGN has been meh in the past. So hopefully this doesn't screw Digital Foundry at all. The only person that I cared for at IGN was Max Scoville, and that's cause of him being from Rev3Gaming. I don't even know if he's still at IGN though. lol

I don't ever do the whole Patreon thing for anything, and if I did, it would be for science or activist stuff. It's not cause I'm cheap, it's cause as much as theirs great things to back, there's usually some bullshit for me to not wanna back something that comes up. Plus it keeps the flood gates held back, not gonna lie. 💸




Last edited by Linux_Rocks on 22 May 2024 at 7:30 pm UTC
Lanz May 23
Just what the world needs - more gigantism. It's a shame governments don't do their job and use antitrust legislation to keep competition alive. Governments and corporations everywhere are centralizing and increasing in size/power. The little guy always loses when liberty dies.
Quoting: LanzJust what the world needs - more gigantism. It's a shame governments don't do their job and use antitrust legislation to keep competition alive. Governments and corporations everywhere are centralizing and increasing in size/power. The little guy always loses when liberty dies.
I mean, Google has had two antitrust cases brought against it so far this decade. That's more antitrust action than we've seen in many years. The US antitrust division's budget has continued to shrink over the years, which limits the number of companies they can challenge. So they pick the really big ones. If you only had the budget and personnel to face down AT&T or IGN, which would you pick?
DrMcCoy May 23
That's bad. On the other hand, it was already bad when Rock Paper Shotgut got aquired by Gamer Network in the first place; I'm not sure the site can get any more ad- and sponsored-article-infested. It's been already dead for years now.
Arehandoro May 23
I'm a big fan of Eurogamer Spain, they're very good journalists, quite based, know some of them in person, and tend to do a lot of fun streamings. They've said several times that even if they belonged to the Eurogamer network, they had total freedom to create content, etc. Here hoping this doesn't affect them, and that they can keep going strong.

Same sentiment for all the other sites, of course, and appalling that IGN already fired people. Also somewhat dystopian that gamesindustry.biz, now part of IGN, is the one mentioning the news about IGN firing people just after being bought. Yikes.

As for the sites I frequent; Aside of the above mentioned, only gamingonlinux :) Several years ago I used to like RPS too, but stopped visiting at some point.
14 May 26
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A bit interesting to see who else IGN's parent company owns as well.

QuoteAskMen
BabyCenter.com
BlackFriday.com
BestBlackFriday.com
Deals of America[56]
Dicebreaker[55]
Downdetector
Ekahau
emedia
eVoice
Eurogamer[55]
Everyday Health
ExtremeTech
GamesIndustry.biz[55]
HowLongToBeat.com
HR Technologist
Humble Bundle
IGN
IPVanish
Lifehacker
Line2
Livedrive
Loseit.com
Mashable
MarTech Advisor
Moz.com
Offers.com
PCMag
RetailMeNot
Rock Paper Shotgun[55]
Salesify
SMTP
Speedtest.net by Ookla[57]
MapGenie[58]
Spiceworks
StrongVPN
SugarSync
TDS Gift Cards[59]
Techbargains.com
Toolbox.com
VG247[55]
VIPRE
Ziff Davis Tech[60]
Ziff Davis B2B[61]
Quoting: 14A bit interesting to see who else IGN's parent company owns as well.

QuoteAskMen
BabyCenter.com
BlackFriday.com
BestBlackFriday.com
Deals of America[56]
Dicebreaker[55]
Downdetector
Ekahau
emedia
eVoice
Eurogamer[55]
Everyday Health
ExtremeTech
GamesIndustry.biz[55]
HowLongToBeat.com
HR Technologist
Humble Bundle
IGN
IPVanish
Lifehacker
Line2
Livedrive
Loseit.com
Mashable
MarTech Advisor
Moz.com
Offers.com
PCMag
RetailMeNot
Rock Paper Shotgun[55]
Salesify
SMTP
Speedtest.net by Ookla[57]
MapGenie[58]
Spiceworks
StrongVPN
SugarSync
TDS Gift Cards[59]
Techbargains.com
Toolbox.com
VG247[55]
VIPRE
Ziff Davis Tech[60]
Ziff Davis B2B[61]
Ugh. There's a lot of that kind of thing . . . everything's a lot more monopolistic out there than we realize because we see all these different names and don't realize they're all owned by the same assholes.
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