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Recently IGN.com updated its ethics policy to reflect their views on what direction their media outlet will be following going forward.

The take aways from this are that they are pushing fair practice, and unbiased opinions with their staff and freelance teams. This Includes:

Disclosing relationships and information about projects worked upon prior to being hired. Reporting gifts from industry insiders, as well as crowd sourcing for personal projects.

Receiving compensation for favored reviews and opinions of assigned projects from the creators or associates of the game or outlet being covered or discussed.

The bad news with this update on ethics is that there is no system In place for punishment should the employee violate the terms of agreement.

The social justice warriors has found a brand new war to fight. And the battlefield in question would be the video game industry.

Whether we’ll see anything change in other sites that claim journalistic integrity remains to be seen. Out biggest concern over this recent update should be what IGN.com is trying to present to us.

If you’re unfamiliar, IGN was predominantly radio silent when the #GamerGate campaign began. Brianna Wu, was very upset by this, most likely due to the fact that their reach is much more influential across the Industry due to their relationships with:

Gamestop

Netflix

Hulu

GameSpot

Also they always break news first on many small things such as DLC or sneak peaks of movies. This brings us to the point:

If Brianna Wu was being harassed and IGN.com broke the news, her status as a victim would have become wider faster. IGN knowing this, chose to distance themselves from #GamerGate concerning articles, and news pieces.

Although in the past IGN hasn’t been entirely clean about their ethics, this renews hope for many of us who remain their readers.

They keep their readers mainly due to not saturating their feeds with useless dribble about Brianna Wu or Anita Sarkeesian.

The point I’m trying to make is that IGN has made a very smart business decision. They’ve reinvented themselves in the midst of a bloody war, distanced themselves from it, and are now just spectators while still doing their daily routine.

The only qualm we should find with their ethics policy is what the punishments will be pending any violations from their employees. We could assume termination, but that isn’t likely.

For now we can rest assured that we have a radio silent ally In #Gamergate, the first of which is presenting clean unsullied ethics.

And that hopefully we’ll hopefully never see Leigh Alexander, Nathan Grayson, or Ben Kuchera work for them ever.

***Disclaimer***
This is a personal opinion of the writer, and it doesn’t necessarily represent the other writers (nor The Gaming Ground´s)
opinions.

Kenay Peterson
The Gaming Ground