It’s been a tough couple years for IGN. Despite parent company Ziff Davis recently reporting strong financials, management decided to engage in some bad old-fashioned ritual bloodletting across multiple properties–including IGN, which lost eight staff, or 12 percent of its union. This follows buyouts last year that saw talented senior staff head for the door, as well as another round of layoffs before that. But the work those ex-employees were responsible for didn’t just go away; it got offloaded onto the increasingly beleaguered few who remain. Unionized IGN workers have had enough.
This week, the IGN Creators Guild resolved that, until February 13, 2026, workers will do their jobs – “no more, no less.” It’s a time-honored union tactic, one that has produced results in other sectors.
“Many of us now work longer hours than we used to,” reads a graphic posted to Bluesky by the IGN union. “A lot of us rarely take lunch breaks. Some of us do not take adequate time off due to there being no one to pick up the slack. Others of us are stuck doing work we were never hired to do in the first place.”
Going forward, workers won’t do any of that. They’ll work their exact hours, and then they’ll clock out. The goal: to convince management to hire back some of those they decided to treat as disposable.
"Every time [layoffs] happen, [management] says we're going to do less,” Tyler Robertson, IGN social media coordinator and union secretary, told Aftermath. “That never actually happens. We always do the same amount of work, just with less people. If we stop that from happening this time and really say we are not picking up the slack that you have created, hopefully that convinces them that, yeah, we did actually need those people, and we do need those jobs."
IGN’s union has negotiated a six-month recall list, which stipulates that if IGN wants to fill any eliminated roles within the next six months, it must rehire those it laid off. In an ideal world, those who want to return to the forcibly opened arms of the Imagine Games Network will be able to do so, and in cases where they’ve moved on, roles will be backfilled. Either way, employees would get to work normal hours and do their actual jobs not just for the next six months, but indefinitely.
"We feel greatly understaffed and undervalued," said Robertson. "We don't get a ton of communication specifically from Ziff. It's more IGN Entertainment and down that we get our communication from. And even then, it's very surface level [where layoffs are concerned]. Just 'Sad day, take the time if you need it.' But then the next day it's back to work."
Robertson noted that his team, social, lost two key members, leaving them with just one video person.
"The social team,” he said, “even before the [union] action, was like 'Well, we're just not going to be able to physically put out as many videos, because we've had literally 50 percent of that work ability [cut].’"
IGN’s editorial team has been left in an even more precarious position as a result of management’s ill-advised hacking and slashing.
"On the editorial side, it's a lot of specific coverage–a lot of people who had contacts that are cut off from IGN now,” Robertson said. “They had these personal relationships with PR and production companies–because a lot of it was on the entertainment side–so we've just kind of lost these connections. ... So that work is either going out of unit to the director level, or down and spread through the team as we try to pick up what was left by [those who were laid off]."
Despite the suboptimal state of affairs, Robertson and others within the union are optimistic that they can get management to see the light. Previous union efforts resulted in “double” severance for the three employees laid off in 2024, which carried over to the most recent round of layoffs as well. Robertson believes that IGN’s audience, especially, lends weight to the union’s words.
"I think it's all about being transparent, because we know that IGN does have a fan base of people who care about the writers and the journalists and the video people in a way that's not always common, but is kind of common in the gaming space,” he said. “We try to leverage that and say, 'Hey guys, we know you care about us, and we care about you, and this will really help us out, if you just give it a retweet.' I think visibility has been our biggest ally in this whole thing."
It also helps that, going into its most involved action yet, the IGN union is more, well, unified than ever.
"A lot of our actions have not been as collective as this one is,” Robertson said. “This is the first time where we as a union have had to really come together, do a thing, and hold each other accountable. Someone could say, 'Oh yeah, I can pick that [work] up.' And we have to be self-observational, making sure that [we say], 'No, no, don't. We have to leave it.'”
Formed just last year, the IGN union is still in the process of bargaining a contract. Previously, IGN workers were able to copy-paste basics from the contract already won by the Ziff Davis Creators Guild, IGN’s sister union, but now the negotiations rollercoaster is about to hit the series of jagged ups and downs that is “pay and stuff like that.” Even in that sense, though, Robertson believes this moment represents something of a blessing in disguise.
"We've kind of mobilized because of this action, because of the layoffs, and it sucks that that's what it takes, but that was the motivating thing that started this all,” said Robertson. “We feel energized right now, and I think that is going to help us. ... We feel energized, and we're about to get to the tougher stuff [in bargaining] at the same time. If we do need to escalate, if we do need to find some sort of additive action to what we're already doing, I think we'll be really ready and able to do that.”
