1UP, Gamespy en UGO sluiten de deuren

Sinds IGN is overgenomen door mediabedrijf Ziff Davis, zijn er strenge maatregelen genomen voor de voortgang van de website. Allereerst zijn er een aantal mensen ontslagen binnen het team. Hiernaast zal Ziff Davis het sluiten van zustersites 1UP, Gamespy en UGO in werking zetten.

Eerder deze maand ontving Ziff Davis de rechten van de populaire gamesite IGN en haar zustersites. In een mail van de voorzitter van Ziff Davis, Vivek Shah, wordt uitgelegd dat het bedrijf deze pijnlijke beslissing moet nemen om zo stappen vooruit te kunnen zetten. Ook belooft Shah dat dit de enige geplande ontslagen zijn.

De volgende mail werd rondgestuurd naar alle werknemers van IGN.

From: Vivek Shah
Date: February 21, 2013
Subject: Staff Announcement

Today, we took some difficult but important actions that will ensure the continued growth and health of IGN and AskMen. Before I go into more details about the changes, you should know that they resulted in the elimination of jobs at IGN. It's always upsetting to say goodbye to colleagues and let's do what we can to help these employees as they seek new opportunities.

It's also important for you to know that we are absolutely confident that we now have the best structure and team to successfully move the company forward and that there are no further planned reductions.

The changes we made today are designed to allow us to Simplify and Focus. Our goal is to do fewer things and to do them exceptionally well. In that vein, we want to direct all of our energy and work behind our two flagship brands: IGN and AskMen. They are both category killers and share a vision of a multi-screen (PCs, tablets, smartphones, TV) and multi-format (text, photos and video) world.

As a result of our decision to focus on our core brands, we are:

· Winding down 1UP.com, UGO.com and GameSpy.com;
· No longer ad repping 3rd party sites such as GameStop.com and FamilyGuy.com;
· Actively engaged with parties interested in acquiring IPL. IGN's role going forward will be to broadcast and cover a variety of eSports events;
· Dividing our ad sales team into two: one focused on IGN and the other focused on AskMen.

De rest van de mail omving de herstructurering en herplaatsing van specifieke teams en personen. De volledige mail is in de bron te lezen.