Layoffs confirmed at IGN and 1UP, IGN Responds

It's always sad to see our fellow members  of the press leave their respective outlets, and today is no exception.

Hot on the heels of the news of GiantBomb being bought by CBS, sources have confirmed that at least four members of the IGN staff are no longer with the company.  Staffers include Matt Leone, Jack Devries, Ryan Winterhalter and Thierry "Scooter" Nguyen.

IGN's VP of Games Content, Tal Blevins, has issueed VG247 this statement:

"Our mission is to help make games media mainstream, and our gaming properties – IGN.com, 1UP.com, GameSpy.com – continue to play a huge part in achieving that goal. The restructuring that took place today was done in order to keep our core business as efficient as possible, and we believe in 1UP’s growth potential in the future. 1UP still has a strong, unique voice, and we will continue to evolve the site over time to make it stand out from the pack.

"We see professionally-created and user-generated content in both written and video form as essential to our future business. The dotcom destination is still important, though our media strategy also includes actively growing our properties and brands on YouTube, through social channels, syndication deals and anywhere else people are seeking content. The Internet is becoming less destination-specific, and our goal is to reach people with our content wherever they may be.

"Out of respect for my colleagues I won’t list their names publicly, but everyone in editorial who was affected has expressed so on Twitter. As you can imagine, going through an event such as this is never easy, and we wish them the best of luck. This is a relatively small industry, and we will likely be working with them in some capacity in the future."