IGN, the biggest gaming news outlet in the world, laid off multiple staff members today, according to tweets from current and former staffers.
Kotaku was able to confirm from a current IGN employee that at least 10 people were let go, three of whom were from engineering. GamesIndustry.biz reported that these cuts across content, engineering, and ad sales are part of a larger “restructuring” across Ziff Davis, the digital media company that owns IGN.
It’s ghastly that people are losing their jobs literally weeks before the winter holidays. But even from a cold business standpoint, it seems odd to lay off staff right before one of the biggest industry events of the year. Covering The Game Awards is already a Herculean task. I imagine that it’s much harder shortly after a newsroom loses multiple colleagues.
Kotaku reached out to IGN for comment about the extent of the layoffs, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
The layoffs came unexpectedly, according to one video producer who lost his job. “I feel especially stupid because I was working on Next Gen Console Watch until 2 a.m. yesterday, working to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks like art reqs or anything.” tweeted Alan Torres. Next Gen Console Watch is an IGN video series in which guests discuss news and rumors about the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S.
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2022 has been an awful year for media layoffs. Gaming news website Polygon was among the Vox Media properties affected by layoffs this summer. Gaming talk show G4 suffered dozens of job cuts on September 14. A day later, Tencent fired several Fanbyte employees, including members of its senior editorial leadership.
Digital media has always been an unstable industry, but record inflation and economic uncertainty likely haven’t helped matters. The last widely reported layoffs that occurred at Ziff Davis (IGN’s parent company) occurred in 2013.
