IGN‘s Summer of Gaming has become another summer of layoffs. Sources tell Kotaku that the top video game website is cutting loose even more of its top talent, including some of its most public faces like long-time video hosts Seth Macy and Brian Altano. They and others impacted have since confirmed the news.
The latter has worked at IGN since 2009 and has been one of the main hosts of its popular PlayStation podcast Beyond since the departures of Kinda Funny‘s Greg Miller and Last Stand‘s Colin Moriarty more than a decade ago. Macy was a senior commerce team editor at the site and frequent host on its popular Nintendo Voice Chat podcast. He confirmed his departure on X.
The IGN Creators Guild shared the following statement:
Today was an awful day at IGN. We were blindsided by the layoff of four union members and many more people across the organization who contributed years of their careers to making IGN an unparalleled voice in games and entertainment.
With each successive layoff, core parts of IGN’s operation continue to be stripped away. Today, IGN has decided to do away with many of our talented producers, editors, hosts, and other crucial roles, both within and out of the union. How many layoffs will occur before we no longer recognize the company we work for and the content that we make?
While we recognize the challenges the media industry is facing as a whole, it is difficult to understand how laying off valuable employees better positions us to meet those challenges. In turn, remaining employees bear additional workloads worsened by anxiety over the ever-looming threat of another layoff.
We are devastated, angry, and heartbroken for our colleagues.
Altano shared a statement on his Instagram account calling working at IGN “one of the coolest jobs on earth.” His last day at the company is October 2. Here’s the full post:
The rumors are true. After seventeen and a half years at IGN, Friday, October 2nd will be my last day working there! It feels surreal even saying that, but getting to work one of the coolest jobs on earth for roughly the same amount of time that I spent in first grade through college is just an insane run that I’ll forever be immensely proud of. I traveled the world for this gig, got to meet so many of my heroes, work alongside some of the most talented writers, hosts, and producers on earth, and meet hundreds of awesome and wonderful fans. There really isn’t any other way I can summarize this. I just feel so lucky I got to do this thing for so long. That wasn’t a chapter. That was several books.
For many of you, I’ve been in your podcast feeds every week talking about video games and more for years and years and my first priority is to figure out how to keep doing that for you, ideally with some familiar voices you’ve heard me collaborate with many times before. I’ve got a few shoots left to do for IGN and then I’m a free agent and I’m honestly more excited than scared about what that’s gonna look like.
Until then, the outpouring of love I’ve received in the past 24 hours has both knocked me on my ass and fired me up like crazy to figure out what’s next. I’m trying my best to get back to everyone. Thank you for being so kind. I’ve got nothing but love for the folks still working to make cool stuff at IGN and I wish them all the success in the world.
Thank you ALL for letting me be a part of your life and I hope you’ll join me for what’s next. We’re gonna have fun. That’s always what this was all about.
Love Brian