cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36423623
Ziff Davis and IGN routinely decide that work done by our laid off colleagues is not important. But inevitably, that crucial work falls onto those who remain.
Not this time. Not anymore.
Source: IGN Union on Bluesky.
I’m happy to see that all around the games industry and the surrounding areas like game journalism the value of unions is rediscovered. Work to rule is very effective against these insidious tactics of one layoff round after another while announcing record profits, because if noone cares that work piles up because of not enough hands, it hurts the owners in the only way they understand - in their finances.
This greedy thinking of only next quarter’s numbers must end.
I suspect that tech management & executive culture has learned & become accustomed to exploit the mental health of their employees. Software and tech are stereotypically jobs well suited to neurodiversity and ADHD, and those people are prone to hyperfocus & long hours and may benefit from tight timelines. If management just gets used to recruiting for autism/adhd, then develops management strategies that work well with that population, it’s going to be difficult as the field matures and attracts more neurotypical people.
I used to tell my mentees that no one was going to explicitly tell them that 10, 12, 14 hour days were mandatory. That long hours were not a metric for success. It was that they would be competing for jobs with people who really did want their life to be their job and would happily spend that much time working, because that’s all they want to do. It’s only when the pool of available jobs grows beyond the number of those obsessive workaholics that they have to start hiring people who have any interest in work-life balance or collective bargaining.
Yikes. Sad to see ANY company treat their employees like this. Diabolical
Was IGN respected prior to this? I hadn’t used the site in like 12 years, haven’t kept up with them. It has always been the big meme for a 10/10 IGN so I can’t assume the company was held in super high regard prior
I liked their guides
People dislike them because of their reviews, that have the same integrity and reliability of a wet tissue.
Hey, you can also dislike them because their site is littered with Marvel news, unusable without an ad blocker, and barely usable with one.
High enough regard to be very profitable, which makes the job cuts even more ridiculous.
What does the “until February 13th” bit mean? That after that date they’ll go back to overworking if nothing has changed?
Likely to just mass resignation, like how Escapist employees did and established Second Wind.
That makes sense. Hopefully seeing the success of SW will encourage more people in similar positions to do the same
Okay. so it’ll be amusing when IGN decides to pivot to 1099 contractors and terminate these employees as well.
Weird that worker exploitation is so amusing to you
You’re probably right that it’s weird. I think most of my amusement comes from the way that those of us who are powerless delude ourselves into believing that we can be powerful - but no matter how you count it, zero times two is still zero. And I’ve just realized, they probably won’t hire that many contractors, they’ll test out LLM slop first. If it sells ads at the same rate, they’ll “phase out” the human side over time. The corp ideals will put profits over people, always. They’ll take the obvious path, because they care about one metric: profit.
If people were powerless to the whims of a corporation, Kinda Funny wouldn’t exist, but if you believe you’re powerless, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’ve never heard of that company. What’s their quarterly ad revenue? I don’t mean their minor hobby nonsense on Patreon or the scraps they get from Google & Amazon, I mean direct ad rev from studios or the like. Also, what’s their average visibility on Metacritic? Do they get counted as a “professional” outlet with pull quotes, or are they in a category that doesn’t count?
See, that’s just it. This entire business doesn’t survive on ad revenue anymore. Everything that isn’t Gamespot and IGN have folded, because the money that used to be there in ads isn’t there anymore. Subscriptions are what keep companies like this sustainable and afloat. Kinda Funny came from former IGN employees, and they knew the power they had to bring their audience to them rather than surrendering to the whims of IGN. Digital Foundry, Giant Bomb, Video Games Chronicle, MinnMax, GamesBeat, Aftermath…they all transitioned to doing this.
Oh. Good for them, I guess. I’ve never heard of them. Heck, the only one of those i ever heard about was Giant Bomb, and what I knew was that they died and got rebooted.
I guess it’s a good thing that some people are willing to whale for media figures. I won’t bother, because I don’t give enough meaningful data to be part of a valuable product in the older world - then again, I also still watch TV by antenna and listen to terrestrial radio most of the time.
“Whaling for media figures” is just paying for the quality product you want.
Lol so funny
Question for you - what do you think produces the profit for IGN? Is it the quality of their content or just their branding?
Are they too big to fail? That no matter what content they put out it will continue to produce the same profit regardless of how good it is?
Do you believe that a contractor at lower salary and benefits armed with AI will be able to handle the 2-3x workload that current employees are doing at comparable competency?
Do you believe that IGN will also be backfill all these positions that suddenly opened up and provide training without suffering a noticeable dip in productivity?
If you believe all that then sure, these employees have little to no power. Let’s see if IGN shares this sentiment and, if they do, let’s see if it works out for them.
I have a very dim view of their content and that of their staff past and present. That’s just a note to begin with, so my own bias is clear. IGN isn’t an independent reviewer, they’ll gladly say anything that gives them ad rev - and the few times that they don’t need to cozy up to a certain publisher, you get scores like their infamous God Hand review, which is wildly inaccurate. They’re in the business of marketing and advertising, not meaningfully independent journalism.
I believe that they’re big enough that the games industry executive teams believe they’re too big to fail, and they will continue to receive ad rev as long as they keep Metacritic scores where the publisher wishes them to be. I believe that the “AAA” studios are deluded into thinking that there’s any relevance to review scores that aren’t the Steam reviews from 6 months after the game releases, or the appropriate storefront page per platform. That group of greed-driven suits are their real audience, not the people who aren’t paying. Remember - if you aren’t paying, you’re the product.
I do believe that they will be able to have a contractor write a prompt along the lines of, “Write a 1500 word article in the style of IGN’s game reporting based on [game press package], which will lead the reader to consider a score of [x] to be justified.”, yes. And as long as it keeps the Metacritic score where the publisher is happy, the ad rev rolls in.
And that’s all that matters to them. Only if the ads stop selling will they even begin to take notice.
But if they fail, the union will have collective bargaining power
Like the Spartans said, “If.”
