this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Welp, this didn't take long.

It's especially interesting that they laid off a lot of people who were the only ones in their particular job, leaving entire jobs uncovered. I suspect this comes right before shutting them entirely or doing it all "with AI" ๐Ÿคฎ.

Sad in particular about Alice Bell. She was fantastic, and it always felt like she kept the site going through all the shit of recent years. Plus being the driving force behind their podcast (the Electronic Wireless Show) of course also spells doom for that one though I hope that like Indiescovery they go rogue and run it independent of the site.

Bleak times. Fuck IGN.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 59 points 5 months ago (2 children)

We need more worker owned associations and more workers' rights. This is ridiculous.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 77 points 5 months ago (2 children)

These giant corporations don't even have to be quiet about it anymore, there's just no consequences. They couldn't care less about you, me, their customers, or their employees.

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Someone should remind them that they didn't do it the last hundred years or so because the alternative was angry mobs trying to kill them.

[โ€“] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago

Someone should remind the angry mobs that they should be angry mobs.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

They care about being able to hire labor, which we provide, and they care about revenue and profit, which we also provide. Not defending any behavior, but the consequences in a healthy economy would largely come from customers, potential and current employees. Failing that, large issues would be overcome by regulations, or at least enforcing existing ones (codified rules against monopolies, for examples, are just words if not enforced).

Without consumers willing (and able) to make sacrifices (like paying higher prices) to reward good corporate behavior, and to avoid companies with purely short-term profit motivated behavior, this is what we can and should expect. Nevermind companies are rewarded by shareholder and investor support based more on profits than.how those profits were made, especially when many of those shareholders feel forced to turn to the stock market to fund their retirement, as pensions are so increasingly a rare option.

Would voting for fresh representatives possibly increase instability in out daily lives? Is that instability a possibly necessary cost of maintaining effective regulation of the investor class that has captured our legislative system to their own benefit?

There are systemic problems at play here- not to downplay the choices this individual company made, but the focus could be on the larger forces at work. If your first reaction is that boycotts and choices by consumers and employees, no matter how organized and widespread, do not work, then I ask you, dear reader, to consider what might work to make the necessary systemic changes, and what, if anything, you can do to help make them happen.

The investor class has made it clear what their playbook is, as they have time and time again thru history: explotation, and as much of it as they can get away with. The question then becomes what us, the ever-increasingly exploited, are going to do about it.

no war but class war.

ed:I hope that didnt come off as disagreement- just trying to voice frustration with a side of "everyone who agrees with you please take a moment to think about the big picture, and what you can do about it" because I'm also tired of this slide into an increasingly boring dystopia

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Thank you for eloquently saying what I often struggle to convey. I'm saving this comment for later reference.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Without consumers willing (and able) to make sacrifices (like paying higher prices) to reward good corporate behavior, and to avoid companies with purely short-term profit motivated behavior, this is what we can and should expect.

I think consumers have spoken, at least in part. What money can be made doing this job is more easily made on YouTube.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Which sucks due to the innate near-inability of a Youtube video to carry an argument without a visual component well.

It's why podcasts can be decent for some topics, but youtube is just someone talking a podcast into the camera for 45 minutes, and all of it would be ~5 minutes reading a single paragraph at most if it were in written form but you really really realy got to chase those ad-impressions.

Non-textual forms for textual content have really been their own destructive blight on internet content. :'(

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I get my gaming news from YouTube podcasts, mostly; at least those two do employ people actually doing some of that same type of work. It doesn't really matter how good Schreier is at his job when I'm not going pay for a Bloomberg subscription and someone else can more cheaply copy the same content and tell me what it said. The video format gives me more of a dialogue with the person who did the work. Plus ads are much more easily defeated on a web page than on YouTube, though they are still partially defeated.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The old Ziff Davis Nasty

I'm amazed they are allowed to own both publishing for video games (Humble) and publishing for journalism.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Iโ€™m amazed they are allowed to own

By this point I'm surprised that they're not allowed to own people, seeing as their business model treats people as if they are property.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Oh no, I love Alice :( She just moved, relatively recently...

I guess I can finally stop reading RPS now.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

Can't wait to start following the new sites (blogs at first, probably) these people create.

[โ€“] [email protected] 106 points 5 months ago (8 children)

As soon as ign bought humble bundle it turned to shit

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

My thoughts exactly. I'm not going to boycott them, but good will is lost.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you're not going to boycott them, your lack of good will is literally meaningless.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Dully noted

[โ€“] [email protected] 78 points 5 months ago

Oooh that's why it's been ass for a while now ๐Ÿคฆโ€โ™‚๏ธ

[โ€“] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (1 children)

While I still "subscribe" to Humble, I don't recall the last time I actually unpaused a month. Maybe this is the push I needed. Their offerings have been mostly subpar after they bought Humble. Not knocking the indie devs, I think my gaming tastes have changes over the years. Also, I don't need coupons for DLC, please and thank you.

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

I had been a Humble Monthly subscriber since they first started it. 6 months ago my husband and I both canceled our subscriptions. Used to be some really good bundles, but now it's just shovelware and DLC coupons.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You guys are still reading IGN?

[โ€“] [email protected] 44 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

You guys are still reading IGN?

No, that's why they buy other sites.

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

to add their technological and cultural distinctiveness to their own

[โ€“] [email protected] 44 points 5 months ago (1 children)

RPS already has an article โ€œcelebrating Alices in gamesโ€ as a sneaky attack on this.

[โ€“] [email protected] 45 points 5 months ago

At RPS we like Alices. When somebody comes along with the name "Alice" you don't just say "oh hi" like some insolent rube. You nod with solemn respect and you say, "Alice". An Alice is someone you should not take lightly, nor take for granted, nor leave unmonitored. For they will destroy worlds and build better ones while you are not looking. This is dangerous and exciting. Alices are a force to be reckoned with. To treat an Alice poorly is to invite shame, dishonour, and contempt. Here are some of the best Alices in video games!

But that's it, readers. That's literally ALL the Alices we can possibly think of. What about you? Can you think of any Alices who deserve to be celebrated?

Guys job will probably fall off a window after this, but God he probably felt awesome when publishing

[โ€“] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Going rogue is how the TWiT network started I think - when Leo and co used to have a show called The Screensavers but it ended.

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We also got Digg out of it, while it ended up poo reddit and lemmy wouldn't be quite the same without it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 227 points 5 months ago (5 children)

I hate how this is phrased as "redundancies". IGN literally JUST bought these outlets, they haven't had time to dig into and examine the organizations they acquired; it's just straight into the Corpo playbook of "lay people off and let the dust settle where it may".

These are people, not "redundancies". They contributed in the old organization, and they could contribute in the new, but they never even got the chance.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

There never was a chance.

Generally when companies like this are bought it isn't to acquire the talent. That's legitimately what needs to be taken into account when it comes to things like antitrust. You want to buy out this company, are you buying it because you want their talent to join with yours to make something better? Cool. We'll let you do that provided you do it today fair and competitive manner.

Any other reason for wanting to buy this company is going to need to be pretty heavily scrutinized.

[โ€“] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You generally don't buy a business and then figure all of that out. You figure it all out and then buy the business. IGN already would have 100% known the managerial setup at these companies.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What should happen is not always what does happen. There are tons of examples of brain dead companies and rich people buying companies they dont understand and then ruining them because of that.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Redundancy means that they get paid for being made to leave the company. That terminology is used because it's different from being fired.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It amounts to the same thing, though. Whether you got a few months pay to carry you through or not you still lost your income, and there's no guarantee you'll ever find a job that matches it in pay, benefits, etc.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Read the guys comment again though. They say their issue is with calling them "redundancies" in a language sense. But it's not sugar coating it or anything, that's the legitimate term for what happened.

[โ€“] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago

It's basically just British terminology for layoffs with a severance package.

[โ€“] [email protected] 93 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh they're redundancies to IGN alright, they literally bought their competitors and got to kill competition with zero resistance

[โ€“] [email protected] 51 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There used to be laws against this shit.

[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago

people also used to vote in their own interests

[โ€“] [email protected] 55 points 5 months ago

Especially because from what was said, the employees were told the sites will be bought "as is", so everyone gets to keep their jobs.

It's in situations such as these where C-suites being required to also apply to them what they apply to others would be nice:

  • CFO or CEO at IGN has to quit. Won't hurt them much, but eh.
  • CEO at Reedpop has to sell themselves (into slavery I suppose, plus it fits what they do to their workers).
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