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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Carighan@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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" 🤮.

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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[-] kat_angstrom@lemmy.world 225 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 56 points 2 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).
[-] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 14 points 2 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.

[-] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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

[-] Copernican@lemmy.world 30 points 2 months ago

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

[-] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 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.

[-] Empricorn@feddit.nl 72 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] CitizenKong@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] billiam0202@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago

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

[-] aquafunk@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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

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[-] atro_city@fedia.io 59 points 2 months ago

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

[-] Goronmon@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

We also need people to realize that it's not sustainable to expect free content while running an ad-blocker.

[-] maynarkh@feddit.nl 31 points 2 months ago

The problem is that ad-driven businesses are price dumping by tricking people into using their services by telling them it's free, and thus killing the market for everyone else. I am not turning my adblocker off. I do not expect "free" content in perpetuity. I expect the "free" content business model to die off.

[-] Goronmon@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

I expect the “free” content business model to die off.

I don't. I expect the vast majority of people will continue to demand free content while simultaneously complaining about the quality of said content.

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[-] atro_city@fedia.io 15 points 2 months ago

I disagree. Ads are not the answer. Treating them as such is simply giving up.

[-] Goronmon@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Agreed, ads are not the answer. Paying for content is the answer.

But people want their content to be free, while also being angry that their free content contains ads.

[-] FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org 14 points 2 months ago

Bro $4,000 OLED TVs are riddled with rows of home screen ads. What are you talking about that paid content has no ads? ALL CONTENT HAS FUCKING ADS. This has gotten absurd. Fuck ads.

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[-] atro_city@fedia.io 3 points 2 months ago

Because content distributors haven't thought of another way to get money. The only other thing they came up with is subscriptions. Some have thought of donations, but they haven't banded together to come up with an alternative. It's weak and totally mid.

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[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 2 months ago

i'll turn off my adblocker when i can be confident that your site won't show me ads for child porn or actual fucking scams.

[-] criss_cross@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

And not make the site impossible to use.

Most sites nowadays its impossible to actually read a goddamn article without 5 pop in videos and ad breaks.

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[-] Facebones@reddthat.com 8 points 2 months ago

Second Wind (old video team from the escapist) has been going strong but they're still pretty new.

Idk anything about rps but hopefully some of them rally and do the same.

[-] kinsnik@lemmy.world 43 points 2 months ago

RPS already has an article “celebrating Alices in games” as a sneaky attack on this.

[-] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 44 points 2 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

[-] Fedizen@lemmy.world 42 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Buying out competition and throwing out the workers confident that investors won't back a small dog against a big one

In an investor run economy, competition means you might lose a bet. For an investor its better to reduce competition than lose bets. This is originally why anti trust legislation was created: The market needs to be forced to compete or it will amalgamate into a giant blob of noncompeting assets.

High taxes exist to reduce accumulation of assets and slow down the snowballing effect of huge investors. This is what the trump tax cuts look like.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

This is originally why anti trust legislation was created

If you look at the history of anti-trust legislation, some of its first uses and biggest targets were labor organizers. Under the Sherman Antitrust Act, one of the first and most notable cases was the US lawsuit against the Workingmen's Amalgamated Council (also known as the "Triple Alliance" of teamsters, scalesmen, and packers) over what was then the largest labor action in US history.

It wasn't until the 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act that unions were granted safe harbor from anti-trust provisions. And it took until 1941 for the courts to finally fully decriminalize labor actions - a process that was ultimately reversed starting in the 1960s under Nixon, and extended under Ford, Carter, and then Reagan.

High taxes exist to reduce accumulation of assets and slow down the snowballing effect of huge investors.

That's the Keynesian approach, certainly. But the Chicago School that came to dominate US economics during the Volcker Era suggested instead that we can adjust the Federal Funds rate to keep malinvestment from derailing an economy. And that this strategy means asset accumulation is now safe and profitable for large corporate interests.

Large investment banks are actually good, because they give us a steady and constant flow of price information on a private market. And since price discovery is the real goal of regulation, the advent of these mega-banks means we can let the institutions regulate themselves without any conceivable downsi- sound of the 2008 market crash

[-] Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Really hoping that we see more stuff like Second Wind, though that took some real name recognition (and I suspect some pre-planning) to pull off.

[-] slaacaa@lemmy.world 29 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)
  1. Governments should only allow big mergers in exceptional circumstances
  2. Big conglomerates should be broken up

They are bad for the workers, and bad for the consumers. Half of the time, also bad for the shareholders (according to an old McK study). Lives are being ruined for billionaires to gamble for more billions.

[-] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Buys publication
Immediately fires what makes it tick

???
I don't get it. Am I dumb? Are they buying other publications just for the branding?

[-] efstajas@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago

Acquiring a company just for the brand or even just to make it disappear is pretty common in all of the corporate world.

[-] ahriboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 months ago

Quality worsens. Losing a lot of reliable sources for Wikipedia and other free content sites to use.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 months ago

The violence is the point

[-] I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world 23 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] sirico@feddit.uk 15 points 2 months ago

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

[-] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

,,,,,,,,,

Here are a few commas, in case you'll ever need any.

[-] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

I remember the TechTV days before G4 took over. AotS was fun but never really replaced Screen Savers. Then G4 did whatever the fuck it did (mostly airing ghost hunters from what I remember) and went off air so we lost that too. Then there was the terrible attempt at revival a few years ago that failed spectacularly.

TWiT is still going though. Maybe something cool will come out of this.

[-] daddy32@lemmy.world 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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

I guess I can finally stop reading RPS now.

[-] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 4 points 2 months ago

I remember when RPS started, Kieron Gillen and the the PC Gamer gang. Fucking shite now.

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[-] 3volver@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago

This is a part of the beginning of it. Centralization results in layoffs and worse products. This is why we have antitrust laws, now they go unenforced because of corruption. AI is going to replace a lot of jobs and we're going to get shittier products while the winning corporations continue to make more money. Winner take all system is bad for everyone.

[-] Damage@feddit.it 18 points 2 months ago

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

[-] N_Crow@leminal.space 16 points 2 months ago

You guys are still reading IGN?

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 43 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You guys are still reading IGN?

No, that's why they buy other sites.

[-] mPony@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

to add their technological and cultural distinctiveness to their own

[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 months ago

The old Ziff Davis Nasty

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

[-] mPony@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I’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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[-] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 12 points 2 months ago

wtf. You can't fire Alice, she is RPS

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[-] shaytan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 months ago

You now have a chance to follow some of their independent blogs, support them that way, fuck all this big companies, they are laying of everyone for ai

[-] hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 months ago

Let the IGN monopoly begin. Gaming journalism has been a joke for years now. But now it's getting worst.

[-] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 6 points 2 months ago

I haven't cared about IGN since I was a horny teenager watching Jessica Chobot hosting the daily fix

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this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
618 points (100.0% liked)

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