IGN buys Gamer Network, 23/05/2024
Consolidation isn’t just for games businesses; it’s for games media too!
IGN snaps up Gamer Network’s entire media portfolio from ReedPop
Keywords Studios subject of multi-billion dollar bid from private equity business
Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga becomes the biggest game release in quite a while
Thursday again, is it? *puffs cigarette, stares out into the middle distance*
Yes, it’s that time of the week again. I had an entertaining time battling writer’s block on Tuesday to write this week’s VGIM long read, only to have to cast it into the bin when the news cycle betrayed me. Curses to you too, events.
Anyway, thank you to all who came along to Barclays Games Frenzy last Thursday to listen to me a) witter on about industry trends on a lovely panel featuring Elaine Dowman, Nina Adams and James Batchelor and b) stayed on to find out that GamesAid had raised £150,000 for its charities in the past financial year.
It was a nice way for me to sign off three years as a GamesAid trustee (including a couple of those as co-chair) and I look forward to seeing what the team gets up to in the years ahead.
Next week, I’ll be taking the unusual step of sending you two emails. The first will land in your inboxes on Tuesday and give a quick breakdown of the soon to launch VGIM subscription tier. And the second will be your usual VGIM on Thursday at 8am, which will continue to be as free as the wonderful air we breathe even as subscriptions go live.
If you’re enjoying what I’m doing and are willing to slide me over the cost of a single pint of bitter per month to support my work, get ready to dig into your pockets next week.
For now though, let’s take a look at someone else who has just popped a bit of their cash into a media outlet (albeit at somewhat of a different scale).
The big read - IGN buys Gamer Network
Well, it’s happened. Gamer Network has been sold to IGN Entertainment by ReedPop - concluding a little over half a year of speculation about the future home of one of the most influential portfolios of games media sites in the world.
IGN has snapped up all of Gamer Network’s digital properties, including crown jewels such as Eurogamer, Games Industry Biz, VG 247 and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. ReedPop, meanwhile, retains control of the events side of Gamer Network’s business, keeping hold of both the EGX and MCM brands within its wider portfolio of pop culture events.
The purchase has concluded with an outcome that’s as predictable as rain on a Bank Holiday Monday: redundancies.
Already, a number of staff have been given the unceremonial heave-ho across a range of Gamer Network properties. This has driven demotivated team mates within the rest of the business to despair (and, in all likelihood, to the pub) as they adapt to life under new owners.
And while IGN will understandably frame the thinning out of headcount as a natural post acquisition activity, it does raise concerns about competition and plurality in the games media landscape - presenting risk to the industry but also (hopefully) some opportunities for new media players to emerge too.
Read all about it
Before we get into the possible repercussions of the purchase, it’s worth quickly refreshing ourselves on how we got here.
In November 2023, ReedPop announced that it was investigating the potential sale of its Gamer Network media business with a specific focus on the UK side of the company.
While the reasons for this were only alluded to, the broad rationale for the sale was - as outlined in a past VGIM - that ReedPop lost its appetite for holding a video games media portfolio within its boutique pop culture events business.
Both parties had initially aligned on the importance of editorial and events supporting one another when ReedPop first bought Gamer Network back in 2018. However, a series of factors including changes of leadership within the organisation, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the corporate strategy of ReedPop’s owners Reed Exhibitions (who sit within global mega corp RELX) saw that common purpose splinter.
This led to the decision to sell. And from there, ReedPop sought a relatively quick and painless sale of all of its media properties to a single buyer - something that it appears to have mostly achieved.
According to my sources, the company successfully rebuffed efforts to pick off individual outlets from the deal. This included rejecting an offer from a notable games industry events organiser, who wanted to purchase Games Industry Biz to support his high profile activities throughout the year.
ReedPop also reportedly managed to attract multiple bidders for the portfolio at the business end of proceedings.
Although a number of mooted buyers balked at the initial asking price for Gamer Network - which was quoted to me by a number of people as $20m - a handful of VGIM sources indicated that IGN was one of reportedly three businesses who did put an offer on the table for the portfolio towards the start of the year.
With parties ready to purchase, ReedPop moved quickly to get the deal done. Although the acquisition was only announced earlier this week, sources indicate that senior leadership within Gamer Network’s portfolio of sites knew that IGN was in pole position to purchase by mid April. This means the destination of the portfolio was likely known less than five months after ReedPop had flagged the publications were for sale - an impressively speedy turnaround.
This is likely to have been well received by both parties. ReedPop managed to get what it wanted, which was a rapid sale of all of the Gamer Network properties without slicing up the portfolio or cutting back into its events business. IGN, meanwhile, will be pleased to have upgraded the reach of its consumer games media empire while adding GI Biz, the premier industry trade outlet, to its portfolio.
The question is whether or not the industry benefits from this all. And while I’m loath to reductively describe it as good or bad for the sector so soon after the deal concluded, I think it’s reasonable to feel concerned that it could damage plurality within games media in a way that isn’t wildly helpful for the industry.
Pressing issues
Pluralism is a prerequisite for a healthy public conversation in any area of the media. Whether you’re looking at politics, tech, sport or any other vertical, having a wide range of outlets, with lots of journalists and plenty of perspectives is important for a few big reasons.
First, plurality ensures that multiple voices are heard in any debate to provide a fairer, fuller and nuanced look at any given topic. Second, a plural media is naturally more competitive which raises reporting standards across the board. And finally, that competition generally leads to more content and therefore more space within the media landscape. This fosters the conditions for a healthy media ecosystem - giving journalists, individuals, businesses and other participants within a market more space to tell their stories well.
Unsurprisingly, this is no different for games journalism. Having a tapestry of B2B and B2C sites capable of covering an enormous range of news, platforms, games and developments from across the world is key to successfully keeping abreast of this significant - and often massively complex - industry.
Therefore, my concern over IGN’s acquisition of Gamer Network is that its ownership of a vast range of games sites is likely to weaken plurality within the specialist media: potentially leaving us all with a bit of a headache in the process.
Now it’s worth mentioning here that IGN is acquiring a portfolio that Gamer Network had already pieced together. We should not pretend that the sites within its network are entirely distinct from one another, given that a number of them have - inevitably - shared resources and an operational structure for a while now.
But for the most part, each site within, part owned or affiliated to Gamer Network has retained distinct editorial structures and positions from one another to maintain much of their independence.
Cross pollination and overlap may have been encouraged by Gamer Network, as seen through the whirligig of content created across the likes of Digital Foundry, Outside Xbox, Eurogamer and Dicebreaker. But my understanding is that editorial staff were broadly left with the freedom to decide how this worked on their own terms.
Although it is early days, early news coming out of Gamer Network post acquisition suggests that freedom may be under threat. Three high profile editorial figures at GI Biz, VG 247 and Rock, Paper, Shotgun were amongst the first to be made redundant as the new owners rolled into town, raising reasonable fears that editorial independence could be on the chopping block.
This, in turn, raises questions of how far the remit of IGN’s newly acquired sites will stretch. A couple of sources have indicated to me that a decent swathe of the redundancies made within Gamer Network applied to individuals who were contracted to ReedPop’s business based outside of the UK.
This makes sense to some extent given that ReedPop announced clearly that it was deliberately selling off the UK parts of its business. It does, however, contribute to concerns that certain publications may be having their wings clipped, just in case they did have ambitions to consider that their remit could be more global - or at least more US focused - on anything other than IGN’s terms.
And as a final and somewhat related point, there’s also a broader awkward truth that IGN still has plenty of room to prune, or cut off all together, the branches of its newly acquired media empire as it integrates it into its business.
Given the pace at which the sale proceeded, and the extent of Gamer Network’s portfolio of sites, I think it is reasonable to guess that any due diligence work was also done pretty sharpishly too.
This raises the prospect of IGN more deeply reviewing the network of properties it has acquired over time, providing it with ample room to make further cuts or total closures if it needs to.
This may, of course, be a pessimistic reading of the situation. The work IGN has done over years has been broadly excellent, with the current staff - and the many people who’ve worked there in years gone by - producing top class media content.
But the concern here is less personal and much more structural. IGN’s acquisition of Gamer Network ultimately can do little else other than narrow the games media landscape by dint of it acquiring, thinning out and controlling a range of sites that formally regarded themselves as rivals to its media crown.
This, ultimately, is unlikely to be a great outcome for a games media landscape that has already been squeezed for a number of years - raising concerns over what comes next for a key part of the industry.
Media matters
So, what can be done? Amusingly, some people on Twitter believe that the best way forward is to dob IGN in to the UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority.
Given the presence of competitors such as Enthusiast Media, who own Steel Media, and Network N, the backers of PC Games N and Project Tactics, in the market, I do think it’s pretty unlikely that Sarah Cardell will be losing any sleep over this deal in the weeks to come.
Nevertheless, I do think there are a few things that can be done from within the industry to ensure that the games media landscape does retain its vitality in years to come.
First, the games media itself needs to evolve to effectively meet the needs of its audiences. The traditional games media landscape has, frankly, been a bit tired for a while, with a number of consumer sites battling one another for dwindling returns from ad funded SEO optimised content and B2B media largely stuck in old patterns of working.
However, there are outlets that demonstrate that fresh thinking can create viable games media outlets that resonate with modern audiences.
The energy in the games media landscape is increasingly found in outlets that relentlessly serve a niche community (e.g. RPGSite), that have meaningfully widened the audience for games content beyond traditionally accepted boundaries (e.g. The Mail Online’s burgeoning games division), have changed their business and distribution model to reach decision makers where they actually are (e.g. mobilegamer.biz living on Substack) or have achieved a mixture of the points above.
Modern games media can be energetic and sustainable, but it needs to examine media trends from outside of the industry - such as thriving local news outlet The Mill - to prove to businesses and punters that it can still serve purpose.
Second, and related to the point above, there does need to be investment into the games media landscape to support a new wave of publications to help them grow.
This, understandably, is a little tricky to manage. It is disadvantageous for emerging outlets to be directly funded by investors who are perceived to work within, or support, video games companies, as seen by some of the question marks against Rolling Stones’ newly announced games media vertical.
This means that any substantial cash put into growing games media companies would have to come from external sources, making for a trickier - and slower - path to competitiveness.
However, games businesses can invest in other ways that both respect the editorial firewall and help grow the media ecosystem in the process.
At the risk of sounding like I’m hawking VGIM (buy now!!!), sponsoring newsletters or events, running advertising campaigns with partners and buying up subscriptions are effective ways to support plurality in games media without sacrificing its independence.
This, in turn, gives fresh outlets B2B and B2C media more of a chance to make their way in the world - supporting their growth in a way that naturally allows for a wider selection of voices to thrive in the future.
And finally, businesses in the sector can support plurality further in a simple, but important, way: continuing to pitch stories into a wider range of outlets.
While it’s tempting to see consolidation as an opportunity to reduce the workload, placing stories with a wide range of journalists and sites helps demonstrate your support for a diverse media landscape.
This in turn supports emerging outlets who need a leg up, existing outlets who need evidence of their importance and helps you build valuable long term relationships with influential people in the process too. Handy stuff, eh?
Anyway, we must wait to see what happens next as IGN continues the process of gobbling up Gamer Network. In particular, we should wait to find out whether or not my pessimism around the deal proves to be premature or well founded.
But whatever the outcome, it should act as a reminder of the importance of the video games media to our sector and encourage us all to think about what we can do to support our incredibly important friendly neighbourhood games journalists in the future.
News in brief
The hunter becomes the hunted: Keywords Studios is set to be bought by private equity firm EQT for $2.2bn, according to reports across financial and trade media. Given that Keywords’ expansion had been driven by widespread acquisitions of a range of businesses, the fact that this part of the company’s story looks like ending in a sale is a narrative arc worthy of a great Hollywood movie.
Schrodinger’s studio closure: Did Take-Two Interactive actually close Roll7? Or did journalists hallucinate the documents that say they did? According to Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two’s Big Boss, they did. He claimed in an interview in IGN (hey, I’ve heard of those guys!) that the company did not shutter the OlliOlli creator, with the PR team doubling down on his assertion post interview. VGIM readers who were at Roll7/know the Roll7 team well: do feel free to get in touch with me if you think Strauss got this one wrong…
Play on with Plarium: Plarium and Big Fish Games are potentially on course to be sold by parent company Aristocrat, according to mobilegamer.biz. The two mobile game businesses could be flogged as part of a wider review of the company’s mobile games portfolio, raising one key question: just who will pay for all those Raid: Shadow Legend adverts on YouTube in the future?
Can you cash in upon a star?: Disney has announced that creators will be able to monetise the company’s content and IP as part of its $1.5bn partnership with Fortnite. While it has not announced precisely how this will work, and whether there will be guardrails around the partnership a la Fortnite’s Lego partnership, I remain hopeful that I will be able to create an experience where Darth Vader mercilessly hunts down the Seven Dwarves a la Dead by Daylight.
Con-petition: The Petitions Committee, the Commons Select Committee which oversees Parliamentary petitions, has asked the Government to have another stab at responding to a missive from the Stop Killing Games campaign which implies that closing down online games risks “effectively robbing” consumers. Given that Rishi Sunak literally just announced a general election, don’t be surprised if everyone is too busy to give this much more thought before Parliament dissolves…
On the move
Brendan Sinclair is out as Managing Director at Games Industry Biz following IGN’s acquisition of Gamer Network…Jeffrey Rousseau has also been affected and is seeking work here…Alice Bell is leaving her role as Deputy Editor of Rock, Paper, Shotgun as part of the shake up, giving you the chance to hire a great games writer, a cracking novelist and a fantastic video game Alice…VG 247’s long serving Stephany Nunnely-Jackson is also now on the hunt for new opportunities after her News Editor post was made redundant…And in non Gamer Network news, Shams Jorjani is the new CEO of Arrowhead Interactive, with existing CEO Johan Pilestedt stepping down to work on the game more…
Jobs, jobs, jobs
Avid Games avidly seeks a Chief Operating Officer…Hasbro is hiring a Senior Manager, Digital focusing on YouTube content…Mojiworks is recruiting a Producer to help it make cracking games for Discord…Metro.co.uk wants to snap up a Gaming Social Video Journalist for a lesser spotted games journalism job…And Dovetail Games is looking for a Character Artist to join them over in Chatham…
Events and conferences
Dev Play, Bucharest - 4th June
Games Growth Summit, London - 7th June
Summer Games Fest, Los Angeles - 8th June
Games for Change Festival, New York - 27th-28th June
Develop: Brighton, erm…Brighton - 9th-11th July
Games of the week
Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga - Second entry in the Hellblade series arrives on Game Pass seven years after the original game.
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door - Remake of classic Gamecube era Mario RPG helps plug the gap until the Switch 2 launches.
Paper Trail - Well regarded top down indie game offers an alternative foldable adventure option for those without a Switch.
Before you go…
Who would win a game of 21 on a basketball court: LeBron James or Mewtwo?
Stephen A Smith, host of ESPN’s sports show First Take, went into a surprising amount of analytical detail when posed the question earlier this week.
Video games respects game, that’s for sure.
I think traditional gaming media is dying. The fact that all these titles sold for a paltry $20 million and nobody calls that a fire sale just shows how dismal that business model has become. The consolidation and layoffs shouldn't be a surprise.
Newsletters such as yours, Youtube streamers, and dedicated outfits like Second Wind are the status quo and future of game coverage.