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.