Tim and Luis talk about what they’ve been watching and playing along with the news from the past week, including the swirling Xbox rumors and the potential future of the brand, Marvel’s Echo show, Steam Next Fest highlights, the new Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo and a new Rugrats game!
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.
Well this can only mean one thing... more job layoffs even in the publication industry.
“Layoffs occuring“
Yep. IGN now has a monopoly in the gaming media.
“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.“
All this means is a collective hive mind when reporting the news
They’ll discuss with each other how to handle topics and what kind of headlines to go with so they can fire round after round of whatever point they want to make
And the sad thing is over the many years even to the old GameGate days they love making gamers look bad as a collective. Anything for a hit piece.
Narrative control. I don’t like this at all.
Independent reviewers will be more important than ever.
Yea, I had actually just seen today on Linkedin that a GamesIndustry.biz guy was talking about being laid off. I didn't read all of his post, but I bet it's because of this. That's a shame to hear. :\
Probably Microsoft's fault!
They surely gave IGN the idea.
What's next IGN Pass?
But joke aside let's hope that this makes the news better compared to some of IGN branches
Microsoft and IGN work quite closely so it isn't a stretch to say this is a move to control the gaming press to get everyone singing from the Microsoft hymn sheet. Not a good look at all. It is transparent stuff like this which is backfiring in Microsoft's face. First they want control of all the games now the media.
While there's obviously a desire to preserve add revenue and early access to review copies, I doubt there's the level of conspiracy here that you imply. I mean there's no direct link between MS and IGN right?
You're probably right!!!!
Here's MS evil plan
1) Make sure that Hellblade 2 receives inflated reviews.
2) Fire all the ppl across UK who gave Starfield the justified 6/10 reviews
3) Make sure that Game industry.biz stops giving Sony's president a tribute to spew their lies and have them talk to Sarah Bonds and Todd Howard only.
4) Control the majority of players for the GOTY award so MS wins from now on.
PPL needs to know about this!
@crazyCoconuts The world has moved on from "direct links" as companies were easily caught doing that. These days corporations can merely operate as a cartel through shared mutual interest which is not strictly kosher either but is also more difficult to prove. It's the fundamental flaw with big corporations in the US economy today and no one in power is addressing it.
Oh boy! If we've learned one thing about recent news, corporate shrinkage of an industry via buyouts from those at top only leads to good things for employees and consumers!
Aloy!
Yes, good credible websites, I agree, it is a good match.
IGN is one of the most trusted gaming sites, weather you like it or not, but I know because they don't fit the N4G goofiness bubble, they can't be good.
Ummmm not sure that’s a good thing that all these review sites are under the same umbrella. There’s no guarantee that they will maintain a non-bias opinion not paid for by the highest bidder.
Ouch, that does not sounds good for Eurogamer.
With so much of the industry media that will more or less follow the same editorial line, it will be harder and harder to distinguish PR from actual journalism in a couple of years.
Thinking about it, may it explain their review score for Hellblade 2?
***harder and harder to distinguish PR from actual journalism in a couple of years. ***
The age of gaming advertorials.
You're right all of this is just to promote Hellblade 2 and inflate the score.
Also the why cuts are indeed coming to Eurogamer and other UK branches because they only gave Starfield an average score.
Shed the non US assets that are not favorable to Xbox keep the US assets that are. Microsoft are going to deliver crap and they are going to tell you their crap is good and you are going to buy it. That seems to be the strategy. At this point I just want them out of gaming as they are operating like cancer.
Exactly right. No more journalists. Just 1 take regurgitated & paraphrased down the chain. Smh.
While its campaign may have failed to impress some players, Starfield's Colony War setting offers fertile ground for Bethesda to explore in a prequel.
2K Games will take the stage at Summer Game Fest, and it is about time we got some good news about the state of Mafia 4's development.
I hope it's Mafia 4. And I really hope it's set during the 70s or 80s, and not a prequel of the first game as was rumoured.
