IGN

Logo of IGN Entertainment since 2009

***IGN*** (an abbreviation of its former name ***Imagine Games Network***) is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by **IGN Entertainment Inc.**, a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, wholly owned by j2 Global. The company is in San Francisco's SOMA district, and its former editor-in-chief, Peer Schneider, heads it. The IGN website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29, 1996. It focuses on games, films, 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.

IGN was the initial flagship website of IGN Entertainment, 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. Publishing company Ziff Davis purchased IGN 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 many 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 magazine's cancellation, 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 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. Simultaneously, the 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 site departments. IGN became one of the top 500 most-visited websites, according to Alexa. In September 2005, Rupert Murdoch's multi-media business empire, News Corporation, acquired IGN 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. They did not reveal financial details regarding the purchase. Before its acquisition by UGO, Ziff Davis previously owned 1UP.com. Soon after the acquisition, IGN announced that it would be laying off staff and closing GameSpy, 1UP.com, and UGO to focus on its flagship brands, IGN.com 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 Meter) 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 owners no longer update the site. They acquired the Xbox interest site, TeamXbox, and the PC game website VE3D 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 websites. IGN Entertainment acquired the online male lifestyle magazine AskMen in 2005. In 2004, IGN bought film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and, in 2010, sold the website to Flixster. In October 2017, IGN purchased Humble Bundle.

### Scoring systems

#### Original scale

An IGN staff member writes a game review and rates it between 0.1 and 10.0, which is assigned by increments of 0.1 and determines how much they recommend the game. According to the "individual aspects of a game, like presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal," the score is given. Each game is given a score in each of these categories, but the game's overall score 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 they score games increments of 0.1, all future reviews use a 20-point scale where games use 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 difference will remain. 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 their 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; 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 they would be reverted to a 10-point review scale, from 1 to 10, finding that the more nuanced distinction of the 100-point ranking was challenging to maintain, whereas a 10-point scale would still be truthful to their reviews and more comfortable to promote.

## IGN 'Best of' awards

IGN's 'Best of' is an end-of-year event to annually honour 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 can cast their 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 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 fulfill much of the old *IGN For Men* site's function. IGN Wrestling met its end in early 2002 when many of the staff departed. Interviews with professional wrestling personalities and coverage of wrestling games merged 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. They have since discontinued them. The site, *SciFI.ign.com*, now redirects to the recently created SciFiBrain.ign.com, which covers some of the old Sci-Fi site content.

In 2002, IGN launched a dedicated video game FAQs site specifically designed to host user-submitted guides. They founded it after the cancellation of affiliation with GameFAQs. In 2004, IGN launched *GameStats*, which they intend to be a more unbiased rating network, as it takes in scores from every corporately 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 and anime, comics and game guides. In 2005, IGN launched its comics site, which is devoted to the staple Marvel and DC titles and 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. Akin to IGN FilmForce, IGN's TV section has different exclusive clips from upcoming television shows.

On May 30, 2006, they restarted *IGN Dreamcast*, but they posted none of the Dreamcast updates 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*. IGN dropped the anime channel after IGN redesigned the site. In 2008, they launched the IGN Retro channel to mark IGN's 10th anniversary. To coincide with *Super Smash Bros. Brawl*'s release, IGN created the *Super Smash Bros. World* site. People can submit their user-created stages from the game and download ones made by other people on the site. IGN subsequently launched a similar website called *GTA 'Hood* on April 29, 2008, for *Grand Theft Auto IV*.

Along with their popular website content, IGN also publishes many different podcasts on its website and iTunes. Some of their 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

* 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 to support those regional websites. 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. 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 on top or below (depending on the regional website) the page's master template.
* IGN opened its first offices in the UK and Australia in 2006, which both share the same information as the American site but with added content authored from editors within each respective region. Other licensed regional publishers work on their servers, albeit can link to IGN's HQ database, import or translate articles, and use videos uploaded on IGN's servers that use IGN's own hosted video player.
* On May 16, 2012, in collaboration with the Emirati-based company t-break Media, IGN Middle East was announced for the MENA gaming community. The site replaces t-break Media's own ME Gamers website, formerly one of the largest Middle Eastern-based gaming media outlets initially launched in 2006. ME Gamers' entire staff converted their duties to IGN Middle East, importing or translating many of IGN's English articles while writing up their reports, especially Middle Eastern-specific events. IGN Middle East is available in both English and Arabic languages. While they initially launched the site to cover only video games, t-break Media started posting movie-related articles under the IGN brand as IGN Movies Middle East, merging most of their own ME Movies website, which they initially established in 2009, under a similar manner to their video game content. Unlike video games, however, most movie-related content will be in English only.
* In September 2012, the Italian edition of IGN launched, managed by a local team, providing original and translated content.
* 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 while writing up their Spanish articles and covering various topics, including video games, movies, TV series and comics.
* In March 2013, they launched IGN Russia, which is managed by the *Gameland* publishing house, and former editors and writers initially completed its staff from Strana Igr, *Gameland's* video game magazine that was closed later that year.
* On December 2, 2013, they launched IGN Africa.
* 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 gaming news and events in the country, apart from writing about comics, movies, and technology.
* On September 1, 2014, IGN Latinoamérica was launched in collaboration with Publimetro and covered the whole Central and South American region (except Brazil) with Spanish content.
* On November 11, 2014, they launched IGN Israel.
* On February 23, 2015, they launched IGN Brazil.
* In 2015, they launched IGN Hungary.
* In June 2015, they launched IGN Romania.
* On November 6, 2015, they launched IGN Poland.
* On January 4, 2016, they launched IGN Adria, which 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 translating English articles, IGN Japan hopes to contribute 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 focusing on the local gaming and pop culture events in Pakistan. IGN Pakistan is initially only available in English, but an Urdu language version began in 2016.

## 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 cancelled the finals of IPL 6—which 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.

## 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 that its writers "take plagiarism very seriously" and were 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.