Last month, IGN Entertainment announced a huge acquisition of other games journalism sites. This sort of consolidation within the free market is fairly common. Just look at Microsoft building up its portfolio to the point of becoming a semi-monopoly. Yet, this sort of consolidation within games journalism is rarely talked about. Let’s take a look at IGN and its history.
IGN began as Imagine Games Network founded by publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint in 1996. It soon began to expand, and in 1998 it hosted various sites under the IGN brand. Two channels in particular were affected by this expansion: Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online. Next-Generation was placed “on hold” and Ultra Game Players Online was dissolved, along with the cancellation of the magazine. These were the first of many such closures, layoffs, dissolutions etc. in IGN’s history.
In 2011, IGN bought their rivals UGO Entertainment from Hearst Corporation. UGO Entertainment ran the website 1UP.com, which was previously owned by Ziff Davis. In 2013, all of IGN — including 1UP.com — was sold off to Ziff Davis for an undisclosed amount. Ziff Davis was then bought by J2Global. Following this acquisition IGN closed GameSpy, 1UP.com, and UGO Entertainment.
