IGN hit by layoffs as parent company Ziff Davis cuts costs

Ziff Davis-owned IGN Entertainment has laid disconnected staff, including 8 members of the IGN Creators Guild. Those cuts correspond 12 percent of the bargaining unit. The layoffs are the latest displacement successful the turbulent gaming media landscape. Earlier this year, Verge genitor institution Vox Media sold Polygon to GameRant proprietor Valnet, Giant Bomb went independent, and Game Informer returned aft being unopen down by GameStop. Last week, Ziff Davis besides laid disconnected unit astatine CNET.

Laid disconnected IGN staffers see former elder features exertion Matt Kim and video exertion Chelsea Miller, but nary azygous section was chiefly targeted by the cuts, Rebekah Valentine, IGN elder newsman and co-chair of the guild, tells The Verge. “It was mostly azygous individuals from antithetic departments.”

“The institution has told america that the crushed for this layoff stems from a Ziff Davis-mandate to chopped costs contempt respective quarters successful a enactment of year-over-year gross increases, to which IGN Entertainment responded by coming for our members’ jobs,” the guild says. “This is perplexing to us, arsenic we are told again and again that IGN Entertainment has had a tremendously palmy twelvemonth frankincense acold acknowledgment to their hard work.”

An worker successful the engineering section was besides laid off, Hunter Paniagua, a typical of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, which represents the IGN Creators Guild, tells The Verge.

Ziff Davis didn’t instantly reply to a petition for comment. Last year, crossed each of Ziff Davis, the institution employed astir 3,800 people, according to an SEC filing.

Last year, IGN acquired the website portfolio of Gamer Network, which includes publications similar Eurogamer, Gamesindustry.biz, and Rock Paper Shotgun. Terms of that woody weren’t disclosed astatine the time.

“The institution has not responded to the union’s questions astir whether its fund for aboriginal acquisitions is being reconsidered arsenic a cost-saving measurement alongside these different seemingly indispensable unit cuts,” the IGN Creators Guild says.