IGN Lays Off 8 Staff, 12% Of Union

Following layoffs at parent company Ziff Davis last week, the IGN Creators Guild has announced eight layoffs at IGN today, comprising 12% of the site’s bargaining unit. Today’s cuts are the latest in what’s becoming a regular occurrence at the company, and come despite what the union calls “several quarters in a row of year-over-year revenue increases.” 

Several affected IGN staffers have announced their layoffs on social media, including senior features editor Matt Kim, video editor Chelsea Reed Miller, entertainment reviews editor Erik Adams, and gaming editorial events manager Rob Manuel. 

In a statement, the IGN Creators Guild noted that the move comes not just after recent layoffs that affected sites like CNET, Mashable, and Lifehacker, but “just months after our multibillion-dollar parent company, Ziff Davis, instituted a company-wide buyout that shrunk our unit numbers, with the express intent of avoiding future layoffs. And it comes just a little over one year after three of our members were laid off almost immediately after our union went public.”  

The union cited a “a Ziff Davis-mandate to cut costs” as the reasoning behind the layoffs, despite the fact that “IGN Entertainment has had a tremendously successful year thus far” with events like San Diego ComicCon and Summer Game Fest-related coverage. “Every single person impacted today was involved in and critical to the success of those events,” the union wrote. On social media, Adams wrote that “the cuts span desks and verticals and departments and areas of expertise, and I say without reservation that they're each A Huge Bummer.”

The union also highlighted IGN’s acquisition of Gamer Network sites including Eurogamer, RockPaperShotgun, and GamesIndustry.biz last year, which saw prompt layoffs and then further departures in the time since. “The company has not responded to the union's questions about whether its budget for future acquisitions is being reconsidered as a cost-saving measure alongside these other apparently necessary personnel cuts,” the union wrote.

In April, Ziff Davis sued OpenAI for copyright infringement, and the union noted that “IGN Entertainment is choosing to eliminate the individuals who ensure IGN remains competitive as generative AI threatens our reach. We have been told that… work that leverages our staff's deep knowledge of gaming, tech, and entertainment are all essential to combating AI summarization and regurgitation of our work. Management has responded by cutting several individuals who do that exact work.”

Senior reporter and co-chair of the IGN Creators Guild Rebekah Valentine told Aftermath:

Thanks to an interim agreement our bargaining team negotiated earlier this year, we were able to get our members significantly better severance than was offered by the company in the past, including an extra 30 days on top of their owed amount due to the company failing to notify them of the layoffs in advance. They also received at least two months of company-paid COBRA, and will be placed on a recall list for six months in case their job title comes open again during that time. Unions work.

“While IGN Entertainment management may not value us, we value one another and the incredible work we can do together,” the union wrote. “Behind the articles, videos, social posts, playlists, and maps of IGN are human beings, not just numbers on a spreadsheet to be pushed around when some number at the top isn't big enough. Without us, there is no IGN.”