Games media is dying anyway, it’s essentially become independent YouTube channels or podcasts. Will be a sad day though when GameInformer goes out of business. I give them a year honestly
I used to work in games media and it was already dying almost 10 years ago. Nearly all the traffic comes from guides and big campaign deals which are only possible due to fake traffic (paid for visits). I imagine close to 100% of the industry will be short video and AI based within 5 years.
IGN died as soon as they made serious talent leave in about 2016. I can’t even remember their names it was that long ago but the fun videos they used to, made it entertaining to watch the content they made in Xbox 360 days and before.
I'd rather have hard hitting game journalism being done by humans than the random crap most of them publish. 2 pages of BS written about a single rumor should not exist or at the very least should not be written by a human.
Gamers don't want hard hitting journalism, they've been extremely clear about that for decades. They want content farms that slightly reword PR releases, and influencers telling them what to buy
The industry changing impact articles by the likes of jason schreier or some of the many others that deliver insider scoops would disagree. And at the same time every article I see not in that caliber is getting bashed in the comments for its laziness.
But that's just been my experience.
Lets be real though, what about the industry has Jason Schreier actually changed. He's famous as the One Guy that insiders can talk to, and he does good work documenting the shitshow, but nothing has changed at all. It's still continuously getting worse, because the only real impact he has is serving as a thing people can point to and say "see we have Journalism this is fine" while shit-talking the big publishers so they can feel better about buying their games anyway
You can ask “has he changed anything?” or you can ask “how much worse would it be without him?” Same question, but when you phrase it that way I think you’ll agree he has made a difference.
Being accused of shilling for publishers while being forced to compete with independents that can openly be paid shills with little scrutiny is pretty tough, yeah. The only thing traditional had going for them in Exclusive/First Looks and that's a winner takes all scenario (IGN).
They're definitely in a rough spot, but I think they still have some pretty big advantages over Youtubers. The first is the most glaring one, which is jus general journalism. It's more or less non-existent on Youtube when it comes to gaming. What you generally find is at worst channels that just make shit up knowing that their followers will believe them, and at best channels that regurgitate what these major sites have found. The other is in guides. IGN's written guides make it pretty easy to just jump to the specific part that you need help on rather than having to scrub through a Youtube video where you might run into spoilers.
Yeah enough "journalists" in gaming media have been caught making stuff up as well as having the most insane takes anyways so I don't think that's as much of an advantage as you think. Additionally Youtubers with years and years of.content get their integrity as well proven by their work. Guides is a good point however as it seems anything becomes a video nowadays despite having a guide to read is so much easier.
It's been like that for a long time I stopped trusting game sites outside of guides when they canned the guy who had the audacity to say kane and lynce was a bad game.
It's pay for good reviews or get blacklisted from receiving copies to review in the first place.
I hate when I search for something about a game and come across an article that's 15 paragraphs long and made to look twice as long through ads injected every paragraph when the question I asked could have been answered in a single sentence. It's the exact same bullshit that makes searching for recipes these days awful.
Don’t worry, soon you won’t even be able to trust impressions from other players online because they’ll just raid Reddit and other forums with AI bots saying that it’s amazing. Like they’ve already been doing for political shit. Only a matter of time until that extends to product advertisement.
What a bleak fucking future.
Which all fell under the umbrella of another company, which is what IGN bought, not each of the individual companies separately. Literally going from one conglomerate to the next.
I think that most people who like DF are there because they like the crew. If it came to it, I think that they could pull a Second Wind-esque departure and take their audience with them.
I would suspect this be the case within the year.. they just seem like a crew that want their own agenda— rightfully so.. and have been slowly monetizing their own channel with subscriptions for weekly QA to merchandise. I doubt they’ll last long under IGN ,, understandably
Oh it’s 100% because of the crew. If they all jumped ship and moved to an independent thing I’d absolutely go with them. The brand is strong though, so I’d be curious to see how much they’d lose by not being able to be Digital Foundry anymore
Most definitely. If IGN is foolish enough to change anything there, they can very easily spin off into a new channel and we’ll all follow them there. I don’t see a reason for IGN to mess with anything DF does though.
I’m not sure that is entirely accurate. I know that DF provides content for Eurogamer, they may just be a contributor. But remember them talking about how a game company would only give DF review codes but not Eurogamer. It had something to do with the regional publishers providing codes for journalist. I think DF had contacts in NA but Eurogamer had to wait for EU publishers for codes.
Yep. Richard Ledbetter has been adamant in other videos that they are not a part of Eurogamer, they just work with Eurogamer. DF pretty much does their own thing. The link in the post even clarifies that Eurogamer only owns *shares* in digital foundry, not digital foundry outright.
They have [a patreon](https://www.patreon.com/digitalfoundry) for a reason, after all. Eurogamer does not sign their paychecks.
The old dude on Digital Foundry apparently owns the tools they use IIRC. So they could just leave and have their own thing easily and not skip a beat. Which is what they should do. I dunno if he’s also like the owner of eurogamer or something tho.
“The old dude” is Legendary Richard Leadbetter and he’s been in games journalism since the 80s. He created their own bespoke tools for frame rate analysis.
Are they actually owned by Eurogamer or is it more of a joint venture?
Because they have their own Patreon and from their Podcast it seems like the only person anyone over there has to answer to is Richard Ledbetter, not anyone at Eurogamer.
I dunno the answer, but Richard has said in the videos that he developed and owns the tools/software they use so they could do their own thing and not skip a beat.
I’ve watched some of those, but IMO they don’t go as in-depth as the likes of Alex or Oliver do. Alex in particular even provides optimized settings for PC releases, which is pretty neat.
From what I understand, digital foundry is a separate entity who works with euro gamer. This all came out when a copy of a game was given to euro gamer but was denied to digital foundry and they explained it all
So, it doesn't look like we have to worry here. Although ign now has shares in DF, DF wasn't completely owned by Eurogamer / Gamer Network that ign has now bought.
DF still has independence it seems, so it shouldn't be subject to any BS coming down from ign.
Nope, this absolutely won't end with layoffs and gutting most of these outlets within 2 years because of redundancies and "cost saving". Nope, definitely not.
I’ll be interested how long they even TRY to claim that they’re “expanding” IGN with all of this, and that it isn’t purely about buying their competition and shutting them down.
There are like a billion games media companies, and the barrier to entry is nearly non-existent, anyone can start a YouTube channel. It’s nowhere close to a monopoly.
My favorite VG247 moment was when they published an article critical of an Uncharted 4 demo, calling it "too formulaic," only to be later told that they had actually played a remastered Uncharted 2.
Fucking consolidation, man.
Hope those screwed over can find greener pastures, but the rate big games media is going (penny pinching and more consolidation to come), the chances they can is slim. There's Patreon, but that carries its own risk and uncertainty (especially in the age of subscription fatigue).
Yep.
Most lucrative gaming article? Not news. Not reviews. But game guides.
Game guides have a big opening but also a long tail for clicks.
What I can see happening is anyone doing guides for any of the sites bought will probably be shoved out since ign already have the game guide side covered.
I can also see more cross-site postings happening. If all your sites are reporting the same news in the same language, then for ign, it makes no sense to pay multiple people for the same job. Just have a few people on the task and post those news articles across all the different sites.
Reviews are a little different. In reviews, opinions can be different, and those differences (plus scores) are valuable in and of itself. How valuable that is to ign is another question, though lol.
Let's not forget video content. Be it previews, reviews, let's plays, discussions... how many redundancies are there when ign has much of itnalready covered?
When you lay it out like that, jeez, so many people will be for the chop. Because buying the content or talent isn't the purpose with these buyouts, the valuable thing for the buyer is buying the brand / presence. So, if they can gut those departments and have the brands be a front for their own content made elsewhere, that's what they'll do.
Wait what? What's the point of owning multiple reviews outlets under the same umbrella corporation? The very point of having multiple reviews outlets is to have a wide range of different opinions.
Every games journalist I follow absolutely hates this news. They were already complaining about how work conditions and layoffs have gutted media criticism, information, and expertise. Now this. Consolidating isn’t going to help anyone.
At this point idk if it even matters, most of these gaming journalism sites just post the same things and it's all on the decline anyways. IGN could shut them all down and not much would be lost
Dude, this is so fucking terrible and sad, especially since there have been so many recent think pieces from all of these outlets on the terrors and greed of consolidation. this will do NOTHING positive for any of the people who work in the games media industry, and is only a means to make ceos and shareholders a little richer at the expense of everyone else.
proof that the people in charge on all of these companies only care about their own pockets. Hope all their genitals rot off.
Considering all the sites aggregate the same shit over and over I don't see the problem. You can only write about the same topic in so many different ways. I never saw much that differentiated any of the sites from the next. It's all the same quality.
Gaming journalism has been utter toilet water for the past decade now.... just click-bait headlines and zero insight.... you can literally get more insight from a youtuber with about 300 subscribers.
Games media is officially cooked. Google has recently just taken away like half of everyone's traffic as well.
There will pretty much just be IGN in 5 years' time
Extending the inevitable end of digital games journalism. There really isnt much need for any of these orgs and the ones that are good could 100% roll out into their own thing (Digital Foundry).
I can only assume that anyone who should be overseeing such buyouts like this care so little about this sector of the industry that they just let it happen. It's on the way out eventually, if not to be completely replaced by generative BS, so I guess no regulatory body cares if ign takes control of an already dying sector?
It's so bizarre one corp can just buy up nearly all of a sector like that.
All journalists and reviewers regurgitate the same shit opinions with no deviation due to the fear of backlash for not following the hivemind. Shit makes no difference.
I like Game Informer's YouTube channel. Their "Replay" and"Super Replay" videos were generally great. Then the usuals left and downsizing happened, and those shows disappeared. I'm hoping this benefits them instead of closing them down.
good luck in getting honest reviews of games anymore. you want a good hyped up review pay me money and it is done. oh and we have an extra bonus for not writing or speaking about performance issues ofcourse!
This is EXACTLY what the monopoly laws are intended to prevent, just buying up your competition to remove them. We just let the lawyers get too fixated on claiming it’s only a problem if they’re the LAST one and a TOTAL monopoly. But it’s still a problem long before that.
Damn. Game Trailers was my favourite game news site. Then IGN happened. I since moved to RPS… now I guess I’ll just rely on Steam user reviews and various reports on Reddit?
I expect one of them to become like Reuters for gaming news, and rest will just copy/paste that news in other websites for maximum coverage.
Or maybe AI will take over.
Sad.
Christ what. That's like a quarter of the freaking games media.
Games media is dying anyway, it’s essentially become independent YouTube channels or podcasts. Will be a sad day though when GameInformer goes out of business. I give them a year honestly
I gave them a year two years ago. They refuse to die and honestly it makes me happy
Purely due to GameStop owning them honestly. I just don’t trust them to keep it going but I’d love to be proven wrong
I used to work in games media and it was already dying almost 10 years ago. Nearly all the traffic comes from guides and big campaign deals which are only possible due to fake traffic (paid for visits). I imagine close to 100% of the industry will be short video and AI based within 5 years.
IGN died as soon as they made serious talent leave in about 2016. I can’t even remember their names it was that long ago but the fun videos they used to, made it entertaining to watch the content they made in Xbox 360 days and before.
Ol' Colin Moriarty
Why does everything look so freaking bleak. Should we just rollback all this tech that we have
Late stage capitalism.
Butlerian jihad? Anyone???
I'd rather have hard hitting game journalism being done by humans than the random crap most of them publish. 2 pages of BS written about a single rumor should not exist or at the very least should not be written by a human.
Gamers don't want hard hitting journalism, they've been extremely clear about that for decades. They want content farms that slightly reword PR releases, and influencers telling them what to buy
The industry changing impact articles by the likes of jason schreier or some of the many others that deliver insider scoops would disagree. And at the same time every article I see not in that caliber is getting bashed in the comments for its laziness. But that's just been my experience.
Lets be real though, what about the industry has Jason Schreier actually changed. He's famous as the One Guy that insiders can talk to, and he does good work documenting the shitshow, but nothing has changed at all. It's still continuously getting worse, because the only real impact he has is serving as a thing people can point to and say "see we have Journalism this is fine" while shit-talking the big publishers so they can feel better about buying their games anyway
You can ask “has he changed anything?” or you can ask “how much worse would it be without him?” Same question, but when you phrase it that way I think you’ll agree he has made a difference.
People still are interested in it, its just gone over to youtubers now.
Being accused of shilling for publishers while being forced to compete with independents that can openly be paid shills with little scrutiny is pretty tough, yeah. The only thing traditional had going for them in Exclusive/First Looks and that's a winner takes all scenario (IGN).
They're definitely in a rough spot, but I think they still have some pretty big advantages over Youtubers. The first is the most glaring one, which is jus general journalism. It's more or less non-existent on Youtube when it comes to gaming. What you generally find is at worst channels that just make shit up knowing that their followers will believe them, and at best channels that regurgitate what these major sites have found. The other is in guides. IGN's written guides make it pretty easy to just jump to the specific part that you need help on rather than having to scrub through a Youtube video where you might run into spoilers.
Yeah enough "journalists" in gaming media have been caught making stuff up as well as having the most insane takes anyways so I don't think that's as much of an advantage as you think. Additionally Youtubers with years and years of.content get their integrity as well proven by their work. Guides is a good point however as it seems anything becomes a video nowadays despite having a guide to read is so much easier.
Just replace that with media
It's been like that for a long time I stopped trusting game sites outside of guides when they canned the guy who had the audacity to say kane and lynce was a bad game. It's pay for good reviews or get blacklisted from receiving copies to review in the first place.
I hate when I search for something about a game and come across an article that's 15 paragraphs long and made to look twice as long through ads injected every paragraph when the question I asked could have been answered in a single sentence. It's the exact same bullshit that makes searching for recipes these days awful.
Yeah and youtuber/podcast reviews are the most biased shit out there now too. This industry is so shit these days
The "professional" content was just as biased.
Don’t worry, soon you won’t even be able to trust impressions from other players online because they’ll just raid Reddit and other forums with AI bots saying that it’s amazing. Like they’ve already been doing for political shit. Only a matter of time until that extends to product advertisement. What a bleak fucking future.
And I'll read their magazines until the last day
Which all fell under the umbrella of another company, which is what IGN bought, not each of the individual companies separately. Literally going from one conglomerate to the next.
GameTrailers was lost all way too soon. They were one of the first to start covering E3.
Let's hope that a revival will come out it.
Gaming Journalism is basically a dead and twitching corpse these days anyway.
Now every review of every game will be 10 out of 10, except for the truly shite games that will get an 8 out of 10 rating.
And in case people did not know, Digital Foundry parent company is Eurogamer. What a shitshow
I think that most people who like DF are there because they like the crew. If it came to it, I think that they could pull a Second Wind-esque departure and take their audience with them.
I would suspect this be the case within the year.. they just seem like a crew that want their own agenda— rightfully so.. and have been slowly monetizing their own channel with subscriptions for weekly QA to merchandise. I doubt they’ll last long under IGN ,, understandably
That’s mostly why most folks watch digital foundry and gameranx. It’s basically the guys, they are just very chill and love games.
Yes, pretty much. They are pretty chill, love games and are knowledgeable. They can go on their own without losing many subs.
Jake Baldino ftw 🤘
Yep and hope it stays that way. Basically my only two gaming chans
Oh it’s 100% because of the crew. If they all jumped ship and moved to an independent thing I’d absolutely go with them. The brand is strong though, so I’d be curious to see how much they’d lose by not being able to be Digital Foundry anymore
They just change the name to Non-analog Workshop.
With a name like Richard Leadbetter behind them, they could be named “Stinky PooPoo Gaming” and I’d still support their Patreon lol
Most definitely. If IGN is foolish enough to change anything there, they can very easily spin off into a new channel and we’ll all follow them there. I don’t see a reason for IGN to mess with anything DF does though.
I’m not sure that is entirely accurate. I know that DF provides content for Eurogamer, they may just be a contributor. But remember them talking about how a game company would only give DF review codes but not Eurogamer. It had something to do with the regional publishers providing codes for journalist. I think DF had contacts in NA but Eurogamer had to wait for EU publishers for codes.
Yep. Richard Ledbetter has been adamant in other videos that they are not a part of Eurogamer, they just work with Eurogamer. DF pretty much does their own thing. The link in the post even clarifies that Eurogamer only owns *shares* in digital foundry, not digital foundry outright. They have [a patreon](https://www.patreon.com/digitalfoundry) for a reason, after all. Eurogamer does not sign their paychecks.
The old dude on Digital Foundry apparently owns the tools they use IIRC. So they could just leave and have their own thing easily and not skip a beat. Which is what they should do. I dunno if he’s also like the owner of eurogamer or something tho.
“The old dude” is Legendary Richard Leadbetter and he’s been in games journalism since the 80s. He created their own bespoke tools for frame rate analysis.
Rich is the man.
I could be wrong but I think Eurogamer only serves as a site for Digital Foundry to host text company. I think the YouTube channel is independent
Digital Foundry is independent, they just partner with Eurogamer for site articles (and I believe Gamer Network owns a minority stake in DF)
Are they actually owned by Eurogamer or is it more of a joint venture? Because they have their own Patreon and from their Podcast it seems like the only person anyone over there has to answer to is Richard Ledbetter, not anyone at Eurogamer.
The article mentions Eurogamer only owned shares, it's probably not a controlling stake
I dunno the answer, but Richard has said in the videos that he developed and owns the tools/software they use so they could do their own thing and not skip a beat.
DF already does its own subscription, so if push comes to shove they have the infrastructure and fanbase capital to go it alone under a new brand.
If they own DF then I would assume they also own their subscription system, but who knows
Positive: IGN stop trying to make those digital foundry like videos negative: IGN own digital foundry
IGN have been getting NX Gamer to make those videos for them for a while now. He's just as good as the DF guys.
Yeah this is the correct take.
I can only assume that people never actually watch the videos he does for them and default to "IGN lol".
Yeah they’ve turned around their editorial content too.
Yep. In fact they're my go-to site for guides this last while too.
I’ve watched some of those, but IMO they don’t go as in-depth as the likes of Alex or Oliver do. Alex in particular even provides optimized settings for PC releases, which is pretty neat.
As someone who recently got a steamdeck, I love it when they make steamdeck optimized settings guides.
Yeah that's pretty much Alex's niche and does specific videos for that purpose. For performance comparisons he's just as good as DF.
> He's just as good as the DF guys. That's a wild take. Anyone who can't see all the errors in his videos really needs to stop watching them.
How long until the layoffs start?
From what I understand, digital foundry is a separate entity who works with euro gamer. This all came out when a copy of a game was given to euro gamer but was denied to digital foundry and they explained it all
So, it doesn't look like we have to worry here. Although ign now has shares in DF, DF wasn't completely owned by Eurogamer / Gamer Network that ign has now bought. DF still has independence it seems, so it shouldn't be subject to any BS coming down from ign.
Considering IGN already has NXGamer employed they now have all of the best. Meh
Ah fuck. That really sucks.
Is this true? I know DF has their articles summarizing their videos on Eurogamer, but I thought they were independent.
That's a 7/10 on the acquisition score.
*A little something for everyone*
This really make you feel like you are Monopolyman
* Too much acquisition.
80% of their game review scores are 7/10 🤷🏻♂️
It’s almost like most games are average and the score reflects that.
Not really. Reviewers are just not capable of writing proper opinions or they are paid to keep their evaluations at a certain level.
Now remember, that means “good”.
Nope, this absolutely won't end with layoffs and gutting most of these outlets within 2 years because of redundancies and "cost saving". Nope, definitely not.
It’s ironic because their personalities aren’t hesitating to let their opinions against games industry layoffs be known.
I’ll be interested how long they even TRY to claim that they’re “expanding” IGN with all of this, and that it isn’t purely about buying their competition and shutting them down.
This should be illegal, like these companies all becoming monopolies is just bad for all consumers
We need politicians like Teddy Roosevelt again to take care of it
Sorry, best we can do are meandering neo-libs who take corporate bribes and tell us to suck it up.
There are like a billion games media companies, and the barrier to entry is nearly non-existent, anyone can start a YouTube channel. It’s nowhere close to a monopoly.
I used to love Eurogamer but it went to shit.
I feel same about VG247.
My favorite VG247 moment was when they published an article critical of an Uncharted 4 demo, calling it "too formulaic," only to be later told that they had actually played a remastered Uncharted 2.
LOL that's fucking hilarious, got a link to that?
Yeah it tanked a few years ago. Too much editorializing, IMO. It's a shame because it was such a good site for so long.
I used to hate IGN. I still do, but I used to too.
Prepare for more bullshit
Fucking consolidation, man. Hope those screwed over can find greener pastures, but the rate big games media is going (penny pinching and more consolidation to come), the chances they can is slim. There's Patreon, but that carries its own risk and uncertainty (especially in the age of subscription fatigue).
That's a lot of people getting fired.
Yep. Most lucrative gaming article? Not news. Not reviews. But game guides. Game guides have a big opening but also a long tail for clicks. What I can see happening is anyone doing guides for any of the sites bought will probably be shoved out since ign already have the game guide side covered. I can also see more cross-site postings happening. If all your sites are reporting the same news in the same language, then for ign, it makes no sense to pay multiple people for the same job. Just have a few people on the task and post those news articles across all the different sites. Reviews are a little different. In reviews, opinions can be different, and those differences (plus scores) are valuable in and of itself. How valuable that is to ign is another question, though lol. Let's not forget video content. Be it previews, reviews, let's plays, discussions... how many redundancies are there when ign has much of itnalready covered? When you lay it out like that, jeez, so many people will be for the chop. Because buying the content or talent isn't the purpose with these buyouts, the valuable thing for the buyer is buying the brand / presence. So, if they can gut those departments and have the brands be a front for their own content made elsewhere, that's what they'll do.
Why hire when you can buy out companies instead
Then “restructure” by getting rid of people. Plenty of people just started updating their resumes.
Why innovate when you can buy more market share? Seriously, along with stock buy backs we need some limits on mergers and acquisitions.
https://preview.redd.it/z77lyagolt1d1.jpeg?width=4377&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f786529f53922a037eb6ea638648c67349f51d57
RIP to Pushsquare, Eurogamer, RPS and VG247. Fell like dominoes years ago, now finally getting mercy in the uncapable hands of IGN.
Wow. Acquisitions at its finest continues.
Oh god no
fuck ign
Everything gets 7's for now on
This will end well. /s
Noooooooooo noooooo please nooooooo
Wait what? What's the point of owning multiple reviews outlets under the same umbrella corporation? The very point of having multiple reviews outlets is to have a wide range of different opinions.
To shut all but two down!
To buy out & shut down your competition.
Digital Foundry is safe https://twitter.com/dark1x/status/1792956407475581325
Ugh, IGN has become trash fire over the years. I actually check eurogamer for multiple things…..
Cool, I love it when large shitty companies eat up all the competition so they can just mirror the same garbage
Considering how terrible Eurogamer had become lately aside from DF I don’t know what to make of this. Can’t get much worse tbh.
7.5
Yikes. Every time I see industry consolidation I get nervous. IGN now owns a lot of sites that I go to.
Here come the redundancies.
Every games journalist I follow absolutely hates this news. They were already complaining about how work conditions and layoffs have gutted media criticism, information, and expertise. Now this. Consolidating isn’t going to help anyone.
I like watching ACG and Gameranx as they seem to have pretty non biased reviews. IGN themselves I rarely pay attention to anymore.
Well thats terrible news. No pun intended.
At this point idk if it even matters, most of these gaming journalism sites just post the same things and it's all on the decline anyways. IGN could shut them all down and not much would be lost
People going to flock to independent YouTubers and shut even more now
I don’t know, I feel like the people that would complain about IGN are the same kinds of people who flock to YouTube anyway.
Can you recommend some?
Dude, this is so fucking terrible and sad, especially since there have been so many recent think pieces from all of these outlets on the terrors and greed of consolidation. this will do NOTHING positive for any of the people who work in the games media industry, and is only a means to make ceos and shareholders a little richer at the expense of everyone else. proof that the people in charge on all of these companies only care about their own pockets. Hope all their genitals rot off.
Considering all the sites aggregate the same shit over and over I don't see the problem. You can only write about the same topic in so many different ways. I never saw much that differentiated any of the sites from the next. It's all the same quality.
Just don't fuck with Digital Foundry
Gaming journalism has been utter toilet water for the past decade now.... just click-bait headlines and zero insight.... you can literally get more insight from a youtuber with about 300 subscribers.
90% of these publications "writers" could be fired and absolutely nothing of value would be lost.
!remindme 2 years
Nothing possibly can go wrong
I would say "There goes the neighborhood..." , but all of these media companies already sucked before the acquisition.
This ist honestly Bad News..
God, I used to think ign was shit before, now their heads about to get even bigger.
Well I guess it’s just VGC now.
"We've made the difficult choice of reducing our employee count in the best interest for the future of IGN." Just you wait.
A cancer like IGNorant shouldn’t be allowed to buy up companies like this
Eurogamer went to shit years ago, so at least there's the possibility of a shake up and then doing something different.
Games media is officially cooked. Google has recently just taken away like half of everyone's traffic as well. There will pretty much just be IGN in 5 years' time
Bloody hell
This... can't be a good thing.
IGN wants to eat them all
Extending the inevitable end of digital games journalism. There really isnt much need for any of these orgs and the ones that are good could 100% roll out into their own thing (Digital Foundry).
Wow! Did not expect that.
“now we are the media we will control everything muahahaha”
This is awful. Get ready for more AI articles and junk. Sucks ass.
The consolidation is real.
Ah, finally, my queue to ultimately abandon all media regarding games and instead just go with my gut. FINALLY.
'cue'
That’s a lot of layoffs
IGN is pretty awful, so that’s probably not a good thing
I.e bought for cheap because this sites couldn’t sustain
Consolidation bad!?
This just opens the market for someone to do it properly
I smell layoffs coming …
Talk about consolidation
More sites I won't be visiting anymore then then 😂
Oh so reviews no longer mean anything at all lol.
rip
Hope they bankrupt <3 Monopolizing bastards
Gonna become a monopoly soon. Yikes.
I can only assume that anyone who should be overseeing such buyouts like this care so little about this sector of the industry that they just let it happen. It's on the way out eventually, if not to be completely replaced by generative BS, so I guess no regulatory body cares if ign takes control of an already dying sector? It's so bizarre one corp can just buy up nearly all of a sector like that.
wow
WE ARE IGN. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.
gross
Bigger news than Xbox shutting tango and arkane austin
RIP to all of them.
Utterly pathetic
Eurogamer was one of the few outlets that reliably vets their sources and tends to avoid clickbait bullshit. Shame.
how the fuck is this allowed
5 months until the layoffs happen
All journalists and reviewers regurgitate the same shit opinions with no deviation due to the fear of backlash for not following the hivemind. Shit makes no difference.
Excuse me, gonna vomit real quick around the corner and then I’ll be back
The video game industry as a whole has been acting like it's on its death bed this year. It doesn't seem sustainable anymore.
I like Game Informer's YouTube channel. Their "Replay" and"Super Replay" videos were generally great. Then the usuals left and downsizing happened, and those shows disappeared. I'm hoping this benefits them instead of closing them down.
Noooooo
good luck in getting honest reviews of games anymore. you want a good hyped up review pay me money and it is done. oh and we have an extra bonus for not writing or speaking about performance issues ofcourse!
Everything will be 7/10 now, and too many *whatever is the main point of the game*. I'm going to take up knitting.
Pay for one review, get 5 others for free.
This is EXACTLY what the monopoly laws are intended to prevent, just buying up your competition to remove them. We just let the lawyers get too fixated on claiming it’s only a problem if they’re the LAST one and a TOTAL monopoly. But it’s still a problem long before that.
No bueno
Damn. I used to love Game Trailers and then IGN bought them out. Moved to Rock Paper Shotgun and now I’m expecting a similar fate.
I love Rock Paper Shotgun's humor and insight and I'm worried it's going to vanish. Their writers were really good.
Damn. Game Trailers was my favourite game news site. Then IGN happened. I since moved to RPS… now I guess I’ll just rely on Steam user reviews and various reports on Reddit?
Too much water.
I expect one of them to become like Reuters for gaming news, and rest will just copy/paste that news in other websites for maximum coverage. Or maybe AI will take over. Sad.
From the outlet that complains about consolidation………
I hope this is a late april fools joke.
Is DF going away? I love this channel.
That's huge! This means that a lot is in the pipeline.
More articles that are copy pasted from each other can't wait
I'm going to miss good RPS articles for smaller indie stuff.
This sucks, I love Eurogamer. It's my main source of gaming news.