IGN kept changing how it scored games, and once reversed itself within one article
For years IGN rated games from 0.1 to 10.0. In 2010 it switched to half-point steps. In 2012 it announced a move to whole numbers out of 100, applied to every old review, then added a note to the same article saying it would keep the decimal point after all. In 2020 it settled on one to ten.
The site started in September 1996 as the Imagine Games Network, a bundle of five console-specific sites run by the magazine company Imagine Media, such as N64.com and PSXPower, plus affiliated fan sites including GameFAQs. In 1998 the pieces were pulled together under a single homepage, and a year later PC Magazine counted IGN among the hundred best websites. The network was spun off, renamed Snowball.com and floated in 2000, and at one stage even ran an online wrestling federation and a men's lifestyle section.
Audience growth made it valuable. By June 2005 it claimed 24 million unique visitors a month, and that September Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation paid $650 million for it. IGN Entertainment gathered up other properties along the way, including GameSpy, the download service FilePlanet, AskMen and Rotten Tomatoes, and in 2011 its rival UGO, owner of 1Up.com.
News Corp tried to spin it off as a public company, failed, and in February 2013 sold it to the publisher Ziff Davis. Soon afterwards GameSpy, 1Up.com and UGO were closed so the company could concentrate on IGN and AskMen. In May 2024 IGN bought Gamer Network, owner of Eurogamer and Rock Paper Shotgun.
Its reviews work in a particular way. Critics judge presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal, but the final number is a separate verdict, not an average of those parts. Since 2014 a game that changes substantially after launch can be reviewed again and earn a higher score; League of Legends, Stardew Valley and Warframe have all been reassessed. Each year staff pick category winners in its Best of awards while readers vote for a People's Choice.
Source: IGN
