IGN Boss Leaving After Six Years Following Newest Mass Layoff

The top of the most important gaming website on the earth is leaving the corporate on the finish of August, Kotaku has realized. John Davison, who has been IGN‘s writer since becoming a member of again in 2019, advised employees on Monday it was time for “the following chapter.” The high-profile departure comes shortly after a giant spherical of layoffs that noticed a number of departments throughout the corporate impacted.

Arriving simply months earlier than the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, Davison’s tenure at IGN noticed the positioning increase into occasions like IGN Dwell and a market analytics platform known as Gaming Traits. Below parent-company Ziff Davis, IGN additionally made an enormous acquisition final yr within the type of the Gamer Community, a collection of European-facing gaming websites like Eurogamer, VG247, and Rock Paper Shotgun. A lot of these websites had been hit with mass layoffs on the time of the deal, and GamesIndustry.biz was gutted. One of the vital priceless elements of that bundle, Digital Foundry, introduced simply final week that it had bought all excellent fairness to permit it to depart IGN and go absolutely impartial.

Davison, whose 25+ years in video games media embrace stints at EGM, Official PlayStation Journal, and GameSpot, might be leaving IGN at a time when its future trajectory has by no means been extra unsure. A reporting, information, and options operation that expanded beneath earlier EIC Tina Amini has suffered cuts lately as a result of a number of rounds of layoffs and buyouts. Amini, who left in 2022 and now works at Xbox, was by no means changed. Davison reported to Ziff Davis president of gaming and leisure Yael Prough, and it’s not but clear if the dad or mum firm plans on backfilling his function.

Davison and IGN didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

IGN laid off over a dozen employees earlier this month, which included roughly 12 p.c members in its editorial union. “The corporate has advised us that the explanation for this layoff stems from a Ziff Davis mandate to chop prices regardless of a number of quarters in a row of year-over-year income will increase, to which IGN Leisure responded by coming for our members’ jobs,” the IGN Creators Guild wrote on the time. “That is perplexing to us, as we’re advised repeatedly that IGN Leisure has had a tremendously profitable yr up to now because of their exhausting work.”

“It’s been an honor to work alongside such proficient, passionate folks, and I’m deeply happy with what we’ve achieved collectively,” Davison wrote in a message to employees at the moment. “I’m excited for what comes subsequent.”