17 Mar, 2010
Joystiq have obtained an internal memo from Roy Bahat, company president at IGN, announcing immediate layoffs at the gaming site.
Right now, specifics are sketchy and there’s still no confirmation of who – or what – has been chopped. The curious thing, however, is that Bahat admits that the company is still deemed to be doing well and continues to turn a profit.
“We’re doing this to reduce costs,” writes Bahat. “While we’ve been doing well – we’re profitable and our audience continues to grow – we’re still feeling the effects of the economy, and we need to make sure we can invest where there is opportunity.”
He goes on to state that the company will need to re-focus on the areas where growth is not enough; with the heady aim of being the “best in the world”, it appears that any functions of the site considered not not to par are at risk.
The most revealing part? Bahat’s insistence that this efficiency drive is about serving gamers online and “serving advertisers looking to reach men”. Oh, of course! Because only men play games and visit IGN, right?
Here’s the memo in full:
Today’s a hard day at IGN. We’ve had to reduce the size of our organization and are eliminating roles today in every part of the company. We are making every effort to be compassionate and fair to the people whose roles we’ve eliminated.
We’re doing this to reduce costs. While we’ve been doing well — we’re profitable and our audience continues to grow — we’re still feeling the effects of the economy, and we need to make sure we can invest where there is opportunity. Over the past couple of years, we have been focusing IGN on areas where we can not only grow, but be best in the world: serving gamers online, and serving advertisers looking to reach men. To do that successfully, we have to be as efficient as possible in our core businesses. The difficult actions we’re taking today get us to where we need to be.
We are losing colleagues who played an important role getting us to where we are — #1 in games and men’s lifestyle, and growing 40% over last year in the total size of our audience. We are deeply grateful to our colleagues for everything they’ve done. We as a company are absolutely headed in the right direction, and while today will be hard, it won’t stop us.
We’ll have an All-Hands meeting later today to discuss this, and give you a chance to ask questions. Greg will be sending out a note with the exact timing, please be on the lookout for that.
It probably goes without saying, but please keep this absolutely confidential to IGN. If you are approached by any member of the press, please direct them to Kris Sharbaugh.
Thank you,
Roy
As always, we’ll keep you posted as and when more news becomes available. If you or someone you know is an IGN employee, let us know in the comments.
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