Nobody is safe in the House of Murdoch, especially on the Internet side of the house. Yesterday, News Corp’s online games business, IGN Entertainment, announced layoffs to its staff. Cuts were pretty even across all parts of the company, and we’ve been able to learn that about 65 people in total lost their jobs, or roughly 20 percent of staff.
Joystiq was the first to get a hold of the layoff memo from president Roy Bahat, who wrote:
We are losing colleagues who played an important role getting us to where we are — #1 in games and men’s lifestyle, and growing 40% over last year in the total size of our audience. We are deeply grateful to our colleagues for everything they’ve done. We as a company are absolutely headed in the right direction, and while today will be hard, it won’t stop us.
In other words, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. The layoffs at IGN follow larger cutbacks last year at sister site MySpace, which laid off 30 percent of its U.S. staff and two thirds of its international staff last summer. More recently, MySpace replaced its CEO.
Murdoch is definitely not enamored with the Web anymore.