IGN Responds To Palestine Article Takedown By IGN Israel

IGN has issued a statement following a row with IGN Israel over an article directing readers to give aid to the people of Palestine.

In the statement, IGN reminded readers of their philantropic background, but said the reason the article was taken down was because they did not account for “All people impacted by tragic events”.

Netizens have been quick to call out the post, which has had replies turned off, as using the “All lives matter” rhetoric to back down from a serious topic by refusing to engage with the topic at hand.

However, many more have also mentioned that the company was likely made to take down the article by their parent companies, J2 Global and Ziff Davis. Neither company have taken responsibility for ordering the removal of the article.

How This All Started

It started with IGN’s main branch writing an article listing down ways readers can give money to help victims of the Israeli attack on Palestine. According to Kotaku, shortly after the story went up, IGN Israel issued statements on its own social media channels to condemn the US-based IGN’s actions.

“It is important to us that we emphasize that we condemn this action and did not take part in it or were aware of it, that is not our way”, IGN Israel said in a now-deleted Instagram post.

“We work in every way possible to remove this misleading and offensive content from the American edition which does not represent our views”, the statement adds.

Surely enough, soon after the IGN article linking to Palestinian charities was removed, although with no official word from either IGN or IGN Israel. As mentioned, IGN Israel has also removed their social media posts regarding the matter.

It is important for context that IGN’s follow-up statement was issued at 3am Eastern Daylight Time, where the US edition of IGN is located.

UPDATE: Some IGN staff members wrote an open letter to the corporate leadership, calling for the republishing of the post. You can read the letter here: ignemployees.medium.

A Note From The Editor, Re: “How Is This Related To Videogames?”

So, the easy question here is definitely “how does this relate to videogames?”. The answer is, it doesn’t. But it relates to the game industry, specifically games media.

One Games media site requested the takedown of another’s content, on the basis of, by their own admission, political views. As a news organization in a field where readers love to cry censorship, we felt it was important to call this out as an actual example of what that word means, and its effects when not limited to scantily-clad anime girls or Twitch Streamers who support hate-filled violence.

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