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Massive Layoffs at IGN, Complete Shutdown of 1UP, Gamespy
News reported by 
(Editor)
February 24, 2013, 18:48
 
Now that IGN, Gamespy, and 1UP are all under the same parent company, Ziff Davis (former publisher of Electronic Gaming Monthly) has decided to proceed with massive layoffs at IGN, plus the complete shutdown of 1UP, UGO, and Gamespy


Jeremy Parish said:
Today, Ziff-Davis announced that as part of a restructuring of its new property IGN Entertainment, three of IGN's smaller secondary sites -- namely, 1UP.com, Gamespy.com, and UGO.com -- would be "winding down." As is often the case with such reorganizations, some of 1UP's staff was laid off while others will be moving over to work as contributors at IGN.com. No timeline was given for 1UP's closure or if its servers would continue to run indefinitely.

Jeremy Parish leaves a touching farewell in the link above.

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02/24/13, 18:48
 
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I'm sad to hear that 1UP is closing. From 2006 to 2009 I loved their stuff -- The 1UP Show and 1UP Yours especially. So many good memories! I lost interest in the site once UGO bought them in 2009 and fired most of their staff.

Posted by 
 on: 02/25/13, 01:59
Sad to hear people are losing their jobs.

That's about it.

Viva Negative World.

Posted by 
 on: 02/25/13, 02:22
Gamespy and 1UP really didn't piss me off as much as IGN has so I'll say a prayer for those guys. As for IGN, burn in hell and let me piss on your ashes!!!

Posted by 
 on: 02/25/13, 03:52
Abdooooo said:
At least for Nintendo, do these websites even need to exist anymore?
They do need to exist, for they provide a valuable service to us all - the constant reminder that Nintendo is doomed, regardless of how much money they're printing or how promising their future may be.

Back on topic, I'm kind of unsurprised - the only reason people really bothered with 1up was the fact the majority of EGM's ex-staff worked there. Of course, they gradually left over the years, and the quality of 1up's writing took a nosedive as more and more of them left. I think the last EGM alumnus left 1up around about the time Ziff Davis acquired IGN, so the writing's been on the wall for a while.

Posted by 
 on: 02/25/13, 04:01
@kriswright

Yup. Same here.

Posted by 
 on: 02/25/13, 06:43
1up had some great podcasts and articles. Active Time Babble and Xenoblade got me back into jrpgs. I don't the the podcast has been active. Kat Bailey does contributions for joystiq now and it seems Jeremy is getting pulled into the IGN fold.

With 1up gone, Nintendo Power out of print, the nail in the G4 coffin hit, and physical media somewhat marginalized (I'm looking at you GameStop) it looks like the future of gaming news & conversation will push more to social and collaborative media that already exist (e.g. negativeworld, nwr, miiverse, youtube/video streams).

Posted by 
 on: 02/25/13, 16:11
I'm wondering if the really large, already-established social media outlets are going to be the main venue for news in the semi-near future? Stuff like Twitter and Facebook and stuff like that.

Posted by 
 on: 02/25/13, 17:07
@GameDadGrant
You're probably right. Sony, MS, and Nintendo will just do keynote style addresses like Apple and Nintendo Direct over various media streams.

We'll scavenge and devour those morsels of rumor and information like the trolly forum Morlocks we are.

Posted by 
 on: 02/25/13, 18:17
vids said:

With 1up gone, Nintendo Power out of print, the nail in the G4 coffin hit, and physical media somewhat marginalized (I'm looking at you GameStop) it looks like the future of gaming news & conversation will push more to social and collaborative media that already exist (e.g. negativeworld, nwr, miiverse, youtube/video streams).

GameDadGrant said:
I'm wondering if the really large, already-established social media outlets are going to be the main venue for news in the semi-near future? Stuff like Twitter and Facebook and stuff like that.


No way guys. Gaming is big business and being as such it is going to have a presence in the media that extends way, way beyond just social media.

I'm going to give you guys a secret to get the best gaming news compiled from around the web on a daily basis, assuming you have an iPad/iPhone. Download Flipboard, it's free. It's the best news compilations app I've ever used and select "gaming" as a topic you want it to search for. You will have more gaming news at your fingertips than you ever knew existed, a lot of it from major news outlets like Forbes that you probably wouldn't have ever checked to begin with... at least I wouldn't have.

I added every single interesting topic to Flipboard that it would allow me to. Food, gaming, photography, news (I only skipped the entertainment/celebrity news topics). The app is fucking incredible. It pulls literatlly everything on the internet it can find, puts it all in a newspaper type interface you can easily flip through and then click on the stories that interest you. You can read the first paragraph or so to see if it's something you really want to delve into and click again to take you to the story wherever it is on the net. Ten minutes with Flipboards gaming page a day will yield better results than a week on IGN. Same goes for pretty much any topic.

Go get it immediately and thank me later.

Posted by 
 on: 02/25/13, 18:29
@Oldmanwinter

I agree, Flipboard is probably the most used app on my Android phone (yes its available there too!). Having the ability to flip through RSS feeds for various gaming websites is perfect. I'm also up to date on most general news b/c of it. I feel informed.

Posted by 
 on: 02/25/13, 18:48
I prefer pulse to flipboard, but I'm iphone vs ipad, so if I'm only viewing one article at a time, I prefer being able to pick them. Flipboard on ipad is pretty nifty though, like a magazine.

I never read 1UP until it showed up on Pulse since it was one of the default feeds. I was starting to like it a bit too, but this is the end of that I suppose.

Posted by 
 on: 02/26/13, 08:24
@Oldmanwinter That sounds like it's just RSS stuff. I'm working on building a mega-RSS thing here. Mostly for editors and stuff for news stories.

...which leads me to my next point. I think these game media sites still theoretically have a lot to offer to gamers, but they're all essentially the same. There is so little in the way of exclusive content and even when one of them breaks an "exclusive" story, the rest all post it within minutes (and maybe we even post it... within hours.) So really, I think things just got a bit bloated and everything started feeling the same and a bunch of sites will die off and a few will remain and I guess that is fine, because how many sites do we really need all doing the same thing?

Posted by 
 on: 02/26/13, 09:05
@Zero

I have no idea if that's what it is, I don't even know what RSS stands for however Flipboard is the one app on my phone I wouldn't want to live without. And it's even better on a tablet. Being able to click on a topic and flip through hundreds of articles in a magazine format is great.

Posted by 
 on: 02/26/13, 10:33
@Oldmanwinter added to my phone. pretty nifty app. i came across some articles on sites i wouldn't normally check out.

Posted by 
 on: 02/26/13, 16:24
Sad news for everyone who lost their job.

I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I love Jeremy Parish's writing, and I'm glad he still has a job at IGN. On the other hand, I don't really visit IGN, ever. Maybe there's a way I can track just his articles, I dunno.

Posted by 
 on: 02/26/13, 17:19
@Oldmanwinter RSS is basically a standardized format that sites use to create "feeds" of their news, etc. that anyone can then access. Negative World RSS. And then you get an RSS reader and add feeds to the reader and depending on the how your reader is programmed, you get various ways to digest that content, including ways that synthesize the news from many sites together into one topic, like "gaming". I'm like 99% sure that what you're talking about is an RSS reader.

Posted by 
 on: 02/26/13, 17:35
Really sad to hear.

Posted by 
 on: 02/26/13, 21:54
I hate to hear people are losing their jobs. I hope they bounce back quickly.

I'm curious if this restructuring will make IGN more readable, but I somehow doubt it...

Posted by 
 on: 02/26/13, 22:09
Rumor: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Uncovered
A pirate's life for me?
by Richard George FEBRUARY 26, 2013


Well isn't that rich. Look's like our friend RichIGN made the cut.

Posted by 
 on: 02/26/13, 22:43
@vids

That's interesting news...

Posted by 
 on: 02/26/13, 22:45
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