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''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former editor-in-chief, Peer Schneider. The ''IGN'' website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29, 1996. It focuses on games, films, anime, television, comics, technology, and other media. Originally a network of desktop websites, ''IGN'' is now also distributed on mobile platforms, console programs on the Xbox and PlayStation, FireTV, Roku, and via YouTube, Twitch, Hulu, and Snapchat.

Originally, ''IGN'' was the flagship website of IGN Entertainment, a website which owned and operated several other websites oriented towards players' interests, games, and entertainment, such as Rotten Tomatoes, GameSpy, ''GameStats'', ''VE3D'', TeamXbox, Vault Network, FilePlanet, and AskMen, among others. ''IGN'' was sold to publishing company Ziff Davis in February 2013 and now operates as a J2 Global subsidiary.

History

Created in September 1996 as the ''Imagine Games Network'', the ''IGN'' content network was founded by publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint and began as five individual websites within Imagine Media: ''N64.com'' (later renamed ''ign64.com''), ''PSXPower'', ''Saturnworld'', ''Next-Generation.com'' and ''Ultra Game Players Online''. Imagine expanded on its owned-and-operated websites by creating an affiliate network that included a number of independent fansites such as ''PSX Nation.com'', ''Sega-Saturn.com'', ''Game Sages'', and GameFAQs. In 1998, the network launched a new homepage that consolidated the individual sites as system channels under the ''IGN'' brand. The homepage exposed content from more than 30 different channels. Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online were not part of this consolidation; U.G.P.O. dissolved with the cancellation of the magazine, and Next-Generation was put "on hold" when Imagine decided to concentrate on launching the short-lived Daily Radar brand.

In February 1999, ''PC Magazine'' named ''IGN'' one of the hundred-best websites, alongside competitors GameSpot and CNET Gamecenter. That same month, Imagine Media incorporated a spin-off that included ''IGN'' and its affiliate channels as Affiliation Networks, while Simpson-Bint remained at the former company. In September, the newly spun-out standalone internet media company, changed its name to Snowball.com. At the same time, small entertainment website The Den merged into ''IGN'' and added non-gaming content to the growing network. Snowball held an IPO in 2000, but shed most of its other properties during the dot-com bubble. ''IGN'' prevailed with growing audience numbers and a newly established subscription service called ''IGN'' Insider (later ''IGN'' Prime), which led to the shedding of the name "Snowball" and adoption of IGN Entertainment on May 10, 2002.

In June 2005, ''IGN'' reported having 24,000,000 unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users through all departments of the site. ''IGN'' has been ranked among the top 500 most-visited websites according to Alexa. In September 2005, ''IGN'' was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's multi-media business empire, News Corporation, for $650 million. IGN celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 12, 2008. ''IGN'' was headquartered in the Marina Point Parkway office park in Brisbane, California, until it relocated to a smaller office building near AT&T Park in San Francisco on March 29, 2010. On May 25, 2011, ''IGN'' sold its Direct2Drive division to Gamefly for an undisclosed amount.

Acquisition of UGO, sale to Ziff Davis

In 2011, IGN Entertainment acquired its rival UGO Entertainment (owners of ''1Up.com'') from Hearst Corporation. Ultimately, News Corp. planned to spin off IGN Entertainment as a publicly traded company, continuing a string of divestitures for digital properties it had previously acquired (including MySpace and Photobucket).

On February 4, 2013, after a failed attempt to spin off ''IGN'' as a separate company, News Corp. announced that it had sold IGN Entertainment to the publishing company Ziff Davis, which was recently acquired by J2 Global. Financial details regarding the purchase were not revealed. Prior to its acquisition by UGO, 1UP.com had previously been owned by Ziff Davis. Soon after the acquisition, ''IGN'' announced that it would be laying off staff and closing GameSpy, 1UP.com, and UGO in order to focus on its flagship brands, ''IGN'' and AskMen.

Subsidiaries and spin-offs

The role-playing video game interest website Vault Network was acquired by ''IGN'' in 1999. GameStats, a review aggregation website, was founded by ''IGN'' in 2004. GameStats includes a "GPM" (Game Popularity Metric) rating system which incorporates an average press score and average gamer score, as well as the number of page hits for the game. However, the site is no longer being updated. The Xbox interest site, TeamXbox, and the PC game website VE3D were acquired in 2003. IGN Entertainment merged with GameSpy Industries in 2005. The merger also brought the game download site FilePlanet into the ''IGN'' group; as of 2011 both FilePlanet and the GameSpy website still operate as video game-related web sites. IGN Entertainment acquired the online male lifestyle magazine AskMen in 2005. In 2004, ''IGN'' acquired film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and in 2010, sold the website to Flixster. In October 2017, Humble Bundle announced that it was being acquired by ''IGN''.

Scoring systems

Original scale

A member of the ''IGN'' staff writes a review for a game and gives it a score between 0.1 and 10.0, which is assigned by increments of 0.1 and determines how much the game is recommended. The score is given according to the "individual aspects of a game, like presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal". Each game is given a score in each of these categories, but the overall score for the game is an independent evaluation, not an average of the scores in each category.

20-point scale

On August 3, 2010, ''IGN'' announced that the site would be changing to a new scoring scale. Instead of a 100-point scale, where games are scored in increments of 0.1, all future reviews would use a 20-point scale where games are scored in increments of 0.5. Under both systems, the maximum possible score a game can receive is 10.0. The scoring change is not retroactive: all scores on reviews written before the change will remain the same. This change also did not affect the scoring system for reader reviews.

100-point scale

On September 13, 2012, ''IGN'' revealed that as part of its new review format all future reviews would now follow a 100-point scale again, but this time without using decimals, meaning a score of 8.5 would now be an 85. Unlike the previous conversion to the 20-point scale, this latest scoring system change was retroactive and all previous IGN review scores were to be updated to follow the new system. However, despite the announcement, the article included a short addition, post-release; it stated that after much discussion, they have decided to retain the decimal point in all upcoming scores.

Re-review policy

In early 2014, ''IGN'' introduced a new policy, in which a game's review score can be re-reviewed and improved, provided that continuous updates form a significant change in the game compared to how it was at launch. Examples of games that have been re-reviewed were '' League of Legends'', '' Heroes of the Storm, Warframe'', and the pocket edition of ''Minecraft''.

10-point scale

In January 2020, ''IGN'' revealed that reviews would be reverted to a 10-point scale, from 1 to 10, finding that the finer distinction of the 100-point scale was difficult to maintain, whereas a 10-point scale would still be truthful to its reviews and would be easier to promote.

''IGN'' 'Best of' awards

''IGN''s 'Best of' is an end-of-year event to annually honor the year's best games, films, television shows and comics. Winners of each award category are selected by ''IGN'' staff from a list of nominees, while readers are able to cast their own votes online to determine the 'People's Choice' award for each category.

Other sections

In 2000, Snowball.com purchased an E-federation called the Internet Wrestling Organization (IWO). Since Snowball owned both IWO and ''IGN'', IWO would go on to become ''IGN''s first official E-Fed, even doing a column on the website. The ''IGN'' For Men section officially closed down on October 2, 2001, and is no longer updated. ''IGN'' has sites such as ''IGN'' Stars and AskMen.com that fulfil much of the function of the old ''IGN'' For Men site. ''IGN'' Wrestling met its end in early 2002 when many of the staff departed. Interviews with professional wrestling personalities and coverage of wrestling games have been folded into ''IGN Sports'', currently headed by Jon Robinson. ''IGN Sci-Fi'': Largely dead since 2002, this section of the site included movie news, comic book reviews, anime coverage and other associated items. It has since been discontinued. The site, ''SciFI.ign.com'', now redirects to the recently created ''SciFiBrain.ign.com'', which covers some of the content of the old Sci-Fi site.

In 2002, ''IGN'' launched a dedicated video game FAQs site specifically designed to host user-submitted guides. This was launched following the cancellation of affiliation with GameFAQs. In 2004, ''IGN'' launched ''GameStats'', which was intended to be a more unbiased rating network, as it takes in scores from every corporate-owned game rating site and averages them all into one score to give a general idea of the quality of a game. ''IGN'' also launched '' Direct2Drive.com'' in 2004. Its primary focus is selling digital downloads of full PC and Mac video games, as well as anime, comics and game guides. In 2005, ''IGN'' launched its comics site, which is devoted to not just the staple Marvel and DC titles, but also manga, graphic novels, statues and toys.

In 2006, ''IGN'' launched its television site. It provides interviews with various television celebrities, in addition to a TV schedule, TV trivia and TV news. Like the film section, ''IGN''s TV section has a variety of exclusive clips from upcoming television shows.

On May 30, 2006, ''IGN'' Dreamcast was restarted; however, none of the Dreamcast updates were posted on the main ''IGN'' webpage.

In 2007, ''IGN'' launched its anime site. It provided features on anime and manga, including trailers and free episodes. It also included reviews of manga and anime from other sections of ''IGN'', such as ''IGN Comics'' and ''IGN DVD''. The anime channel was dropped after ''IGN'' redesigned the site. In 2008, the ''IGN Retro'' channel was launched to mark ''IGN''s 10th anniversary. To coincide with the release of '' Super Smash Bros. Brawl'', ''IGN'' created the ''Super Smash Bros. World'' site. On the site, people can submit their user-created stages from the game and download ones made by other people. ''IGN'' subsequently launched a similar website called ''GTA 'Hood'' on April 29, 2008, for '' Grand Theft Auto IV''.

Along with its popular website content, ''IGN'' also publishes many different podcasts on both its website and on iTunes. Some of its podcasts include console-oriented shows like the PlayStation-focused "Podcast Beyond" and the Xbox-oriented "Podcast Unlocked", the Nintendo-oriented "Nintendo Voice Chat", and ''Game Scoop!'', a podcast where a variety of editors discuss news and topics surrounding the video game industry.

Regional websites

''IGN'' has 28 editions in 25 languages, as of 2021. The ''US & Canada'', ''UK & Ireland'', and ''Australia & New Zealand'' editions are operated by Ziff Davis subsidiaries, with all others being franchised publishers. Since 2006, IGN Entertainment began launching regional versions of the website for various countries and pan-regions. Initially, ''IGN'' began opening new offices outside the United States in order to support those regional websites, but later ''IGN'' began franchising its brand as a more cost-effective means of globalization, wherein it licensed various media publishers in many countries to use the ''IGN'' brand and manage regional websites on their own. Licensed regional publishers work on their own servers, albeit can link to ''IGN''s HQ database, where they can import or translate articles, and use videos uploaded on ''IGN''s servers that use ''IGN''s own hosted video player.

When visiting www.ign.com from an ''IGN''-supported region, the site automatically redirects visitors to their localized version using geolocation software, based on their countries' IP addresses. Each version of the site has a modified logo with their country's/region's respective flags near the ''IGN'' logo. However, it is still possible to access the original American website using a navigation bar above or below (depending on the regional website) the page's master template.

* In 2006, ''IGN'' opened its first offices in the UK and Australia, which both shared the same information as the American site but with added content authored from editors within each respective region.
* On May 16, 2012, in collaboration with Emirati-based company t-break Media, ''IGN Middle East'' was announced for the MENA gaming community. The site replaced t-break Media's own ME Gamers website, which was formerly one of the largest Middle Eastern-based gaming media outlets that was originally launched in 2006. ME Gamers' entire staff converted their duties to ''IGN Middle East'', importing or translating many of ''IGN''s English articles, whilst writing up their own articles, especially for Middle Eastern-specific events. ''IGN Middle East'' is available in both English and Arabic languages. While the site was initially launched to cover only video games, t-break Media announced in September 2012 that it would begin posting movie-related articles under the ''IGN'' brand as ''IGN Movies Middle East'', merging most of the duties from its own ME Movies website, which was originally established in 2009, under a similar manner to its video game content. Unlike video games, however, most movie-related content will be in English only. ''IGN Middle East'' organized IGN Convention from 2013 to 2016.
* In September 2012 the Italian edition of ''IGN'' launched, managed by a local team, providing both original and translated contents.
* On October 9, 2012, in collaboration with the Spanish-based media company Marca, ''IGN Spain'' was announced. The site effectively replaces Marca's own Marca Player gaming news website. Marca Player's editors converted their duties to ''IGN Spain'', translating many of ''IGN''s English articles, whilst writing up their own Spanish articles as well, covering various topics including video games, movies, TV series and comics.
* In March 2013, ''IGN Russia'' was launched. The Russian version is managed by ''Gameland'' publishing house, and its staff was initially completed by former editors and writers from Strana Igr, ''Gameland's'' printed video game magazine that was closed later that year. ''IGN Russia'' was closed without prior notice by American owners in 2022 after Russian-Ukrainian war began on February 24, effectively wiping out years of work of local editors..
* On December 2, 2013, ''IGN Africa'' was launched.
* On December 17, 2013, in collaboration with Times Internet, ''IGN India'' was launched. The Indian edition takes AAA game reviews from its US counterpart and focuses more on coverage of gaming news and events in the country, apart from writing about comics, movies, technology. In November 2016, Fork Media Group partnered with Ziff Davis to operate ''IGN India.'' The Indian edition has since then expanded its coverage to pop culture and mainstream entertainment news and events in the country, as well as doing its own reviews for AAA games, TV series, and movies from both India and abroad.
* On September 1, 2014, ''IGN Latinoamérica'' was launched in collaboration with Publimetro and cover the whole Latin American region (except Brazil) with content in Spanish.
* On November 11, 2014, ''IGN Israel'' was launched.
* On January 30, 2015, ''IGN Hungary'' was launched.
* On February 23, 2015, ''IGN Brazil'' was launched.
* In June 2015, ''IGN Romania'' was launched.
* On November 6, 2015, ''IGN Poland'' was launched.
* On January 4, 2016, ''IGN Adria'' was launched. ''IGN Adria'' covers countries of ex Yugoslavia region: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
* On April 11, 2016, in collaboration with Sankei Digital, the online publishing arm of Japanese newspaper publisher Sankei Shimbun, ''IGN Japan'' was publicly launched, and was expected to have a full-scale release by summer 2016. The launch of ''IGN Japan'' is considered a critical development: In addition to translation of English articles, ''IGN Japan'' is hoping to also contribute much original content for other ''IGN'' editions from the Japanese end of the gaming industry, one of the world's largest video game markets with little mainstream journalism for Western media.
* On April 12, 2016, in collaboration with Pakistani-based Express Publications, ''IGN Pakistan'' was publicly launched. Pakistan originally shared some media coverage with ''IGN Middle East'', and later ''IGN India'', before spinning off to a completely independent ''IGN'' edition with focus on local gaming and pop culture events in Pakistan. ''IGN'' Pakistan is initially only available in English, but an Urdu language version was expected to launch later in 2016.
* On August 7, 2019, Malaysian media giant Media Prima partnered with Ziff Davis to launch the Southeast Asian version of ''IGN'' for the Malaysian, Indonesian, Singaporean, Thai, Vietnamese and the Filipino markets
* In September 2020, ''IGN China'' was launched as an "editorially independent" outlet of Tencent.

''IGN'' Pro League

In 2011, ''IGN'' launched IGN Pro League, a professional e-sports circuit that ran tournaments for '' StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty'', '' ShootMania Storm'' and '' League of Legends''. On March 6, 2013, only weeks prior to the event, ''IGN'' abruptly canceled the finals of IPL 6which were to be held in Las Vegas from March 28 through 31, and discontinued the league. ''IGN'' indicated that it was no longer in a position to commit to competing with the increased number of e-sports events that were now being held. On April 8, 2013, Blizzard Entertainment announced that it had acquired the staff and assets of the IPL from ''IGN''; its former staff were reassigned to work on in-house e-sports productions.

Controversy

Plagiarism

In August 2018, the owner of YouTube channel Boomstick Gaming accused ''IGN'' reviewer Filip Miucin of plagiarizing his video review of the game ''Dead Cells''. On August 7, ''IGN'' replaced its review with a statement saying it took plagiarism seriously and was investigating the claim. Later that day, ''IGN'' stated that it had found "substantial similarities" between the reviews, apologized, and announced that it had dismissed Miucin. On August 10, ''IGN'' published a new review by Brandin Tyrrel, which included an editor's note apologizing again and stating that "this review (and its score) represents solely the opinion of the new reviewer".

In a subsequently unlisted video, Miucin responded that while he took "complete ownership over what happened", the similarity was not intentional. Website ''Kotaku'' found similarities between Miucin's other reviews and reviews on '' Nintendo Life'' and ''Engadget'', and material posted on the games discussion forum ''NeoGAF''. On August 14, ''IGN'' announced that it would remove all of Miucin's work pending further review. On April 19, 2019, Miucin admitted plagiarism and issued an apology on his YouTube channel.

Retracted article supporting Palestinian aid

During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, the main ''IGN'' site posted an article on May 14 urging readers to donate to charities helping Palestinian civilians such as the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and linked to relevant news reporting. A Palestinian flag was also added besides the ''IGN'' logo. Shortly after the article went up ''IGN Israel'' made statements on social media condemning the article. The Palestinian flag was soon replaced with a Red Cross. On May 16, the article was deleted and a statement was made on the ''IGN'' Twitter account saying that it was wrong to only highlight one side of the conflict. A reposted version on South Africa-based ''IGN Africa'' was also removed. On May 17, over 60 members of ''IGN''s staff signed an open letter condemning the article's removal for going against the site's editorial freedom and policies for retracting or correcting articles, as well as the lack of communication with ''IGN'' staff. ''IGN'' reinstated the article on August 24 under a new headline alongside a statement of newly formalized editorial policies.

Television and films

* ''Gamer Nation'' (2003–)
* ''Bill Fillmaff's Secret System (2006 Video)''
* ''Game Scoop!'' (2006–)
* ''IGN Originals'' (2008–)
* ''IGN Daily Fix'' (2009–)
* ''Up at Noon with Greg Miller'' (2012–)
* ''Cheap Cool Crazy'' (2012–)
* ''IGN Presents'' (2012–)
* ''Castlevania: Hymn of Blood'' (2012–)
* ''IGN Live'' (2012–)
* ''Project: SERA'' (2013–)
* ''Not Another Zombie Apocalypse'' (2013–)
* ''Dave Gorman: Modern Life Is Goodish: Badgers Don't Vote'' (2013)
* ''Assassin's Creed 4: Making Black Flag'' (2013–)
* ''9 Reasons We're Excited for Destiny'' (2013 Video)
* ''Optimus Prime in Titanfall (2014 Video)''
* ''Making Assassin's Creed Unity: A New Beginning'' (2014)
* ''Fast to the Future (2015 Video)''
* ''Star Wars on Netflix (2016 Video)''
* ''IGN Access NYCC Cosplay (2016–2017)''
* ''The 20th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards (2017 TV Special)''
* ''IGN Now'' (2019-)''
* ''Developers React to Speedruns'' (2019-)''

Notes

References

External links

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{{Portal bar, San Francisco Bay Area, Companies, Journalism, Video games

2000 initial public offerings
2005 mergers and acquisitions
2013 mergers and acquisitions
Blog hosting services
Companies based in San Francisco
English-language websites
Former News Corporation subsidiaries
Internet properties established in 1996
Multi-channel networks
Video game Internet forums
Video game news websites