IGN cut staff across multiple departments on September 14, sources told Kotaku, in a round of layoffs that claimed two of the site’s most recognizable on-camera personalities. It’s the third documented wave of cuts at the games-media outlet in a little over a year, and it lands during one of the busiest stretches of the gaming calendar.

Who was let go

Brian Altano, an IGN staffer since 2009 and longtime co-host of the PlayStation-focused podcast Podcast Beyond, was among those laid off. So was Seth Macy, IGN’s senior commerce editor and a regular voice on Nintendo Voice Chat. Bo Moore, IGN’s Senior Manager of Tech Coverage, confirmed on social media that he was also cut. Reporting from Kotaku and other outlets indicates the layoffs reached beyond editorial and video talent into multiple departments, though the total headcount affected hasn’t been made public. Some reports suggest the scope may have varied by employee — including whether staff were remote and willing to relocate.

Not IGN’s first round this year

This is at least the third distinct layoff event tied to IGN and parent company Ziff Davis since August 2025. That first round cut eight staffers, representing about 12% of the IGN Creators Guild’s union bargaining unit, with the company attributing the cuts to a Ziff Davis cost-cutting mandate despite what the union said were several consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue growth. A second round in June 2026 hit roughly ten engineering and tech workers who supported IGN.com and Humble Bundle, several of whom were reportedly eligible to join the same union. September’s cuts make a third round in just over a year, this time reaching further into editorial, video, and commerce staff.

A pattern the union has flagged before

According to IGN Creators Guild members who spoke with Aftermath, this round follows a pattern the union says it has seen before: layoffs landing right after a major promotional push. IGN Live, the company’s Los Angeles event that runs alongside Summer Game Fest, wrapped earlier this year, and IGN’s staff had just finished an on-site coverage blitz at San Diego Comic-Con — both high-visibility moments for the brand that immediately preceded cuts to the people who produced that coverage. The June round of engineering layoffs followed a similar rhythm, coming shortly after Summer Game Fest itself.

Why it matters beyond IGN

IGN is one of the largest and most-visited outlets covering games, and its podcasts and video franchises — Podcast Beyond and Nintendo Voice Chat among them — have built loyal, long-running audiences around specific hosts rather than just the IGN brand itself. Losing hosts with over a decade of tenure is a different kind of loss than a newsroom losing bylines; it’s audience-facing talent that’s hard to replace without changing what a franchise actually is. It also fits a broader trend across games media and games development alike, where profitable or growing companies have continued cutting staff rather than the reverse — the same dynamic driving record layoffs industry-wide even in a record-revenue year.

For workers, it’s also another data point in games media’s slow-moving unionization story: the same IGN Creators Guild bargaining unit that absorbed 12% cuts in 2025 is now watching a third round land in departments well outside engineering. Whether that accelerates organizing efforts or simply demoralizes an already-shrunk newsroom is the open question heading into whatever IGN’s next big event turns out to be.

If you’re tracking how the rest of the industry is handling its own headcount pressure, our breakdown of why record profits and record layoffs are happening at the same time covers the underlying dynamics. For a look at how organized labor is responding to similar cuts at a major publisher, see Rockstar’s ongoing employment tribunal over its fired GTA 6 developers.