The Onion Finalizes $2.7 Million Buyout of IGN

Coming off another stellar article full of their world renowned fake news and comedy punches delivered with an expert level of deadpan, IGN announced they have been acquired by fellow satirical site The Onion. While a deal to purchase the prominent fake video game news site has been in the works for quite some time, once The Onion saw its recent article titled “The Last Guardian is Cancelled” they knew the buyout could not wait any longer.

“We try our best to post some pretty outlandish stuff,” lead editor for The Onion Bruce Wilkins told us citing several example articles such as ‘God Wonders What Happens to Humans After They Die’ and ‘Man Honestly Think He’s Going To Bed Early’, “But when IGN actually had the gall to come out and declare a game cancelled with such certainty when there was no proof whatsoever that it was, we knew we could never reach that level of expertise. Those guys are legends, we had to have them join our team.”

Wilkins also went on to commend IGN for naming themselves the leading online and media services company on their about page with no indication that their news posts are fake, telling us, “We thought we were clever calling ourselves America’s Leading News Source, but man that takes some balls from those guys to advertise themselves as a real gaming journalism site - even we have a disclaimer that we're satire on our site. Kudos to them.”

One report suggests that The Onion was quick to buy the satirical gaming site in fear of being outclassed in the minds of fans of satire and fake news everywhere. Up until recently, The Onion was widely known as the go-to site for a laugh at some made up bullshit, reaching upwards of three million unique visitors a month, but IGN was quickly gaining ground on the news giant.

As The Onion’s lead web developer Darren Morris told sources, “Our numbers and social media shares were slowly dropping among our normal readers while IGN’s were rapidly trending upwards. The numbers don’t lie; people who like reading hilariously fake and stupid shit are flocking away from us to IGN. That Last Guardians Is Cancelled article was the last straw. We needed that kind of creativity on our team and we needed it now.”

Sources have also confirmed that another big driving factor of the purchase was IGN’s ability to get their fake news out just hours after an actual story breaks. “Those guys see something happen in the real world then just quickly make up their our story and post it on their site. Even at The Onion we usually have to check a few facts to make sure our jokes are accurate as well as edit it to make sure the article isn’t a total mess,” one Onion contributor told us, also complimenting IGN’s steadfast approach to consistently making their writing appear as though a college intern wrote it with little to no editing, “It takes a lot of effort to maintain a style that effectively.” 

The large price of $2.7 seems like a steep buyout at first glance but, as CEO of The Onion Barry Hanson told sources, "As long as we maintain IGN's policy of giving review scores based on how much each developer is willing to pay, we'll make that $2.7 million back in no time at all."

At press time the deal has yet to be finalized as The Onion does not want to disrupt their new partner’s usual operations during the hectic E3 week. “We look forward to seeing their fake and fucking idiotic recaps of the day’s events,” Wilkins told us while chuckling to himself imagining IGN’s witty fake hype article for the next Call of Duty game. “Hopefully their review with completely arbitrary numbers come out and they give it a 9.6a4 or whatever the hell they do over there.”