Online publisher Ziff Davis has just completed the purchase of IGN, meaning that the company will be reunited with its erstwhile gaming property 1up.com. For those of you playing along at home, the IGN sale is a reunion of sorts. 1up.com, once a Ziff Davis owned property, was purchased by UGO when the company entered bankruptcy in 2009. IGN, meanwhile, purchased UGO, in 2011. NewsCorp, the Rupert Murdoch owned media conglomerate, which owns IGN, began looking to spin off the site and its attendant properties, and found a buyer in Ziff Davis, which gets back 1up.com as well as a number of other names in the gaming media world. As you can see, the circle of video game media life is nearly complete. In the next step, Ziff Davis will be eaten by hyenas, and a lovely forest will sprout up in its place.
While it remains to be seen how the sale will impact staff at the affected sites, the sale is definite good news for IGN’s now former parent company, NewsCorp, which had been looking to unload the gaming concern as part of a “restructuring” plan. For those of you not in the business, restructuring is what happens when you have to sell off media properties to pay the legal bills that come up when you get caught wiretapping all of the things.
(via Destructoid)
- NewsCorp has been shopping the property for some time
- Tech journalism sure is kind of a shit show lately, huh?
- But it’s not as confusing as this head scratching sci-fi/tech journo mashup
