Month: January 2023

Entertainment company Fandom has laid off an unspecified number of employees across multiple properties including Giant Bomb, GameSpot and Metacritic. These properties are mainly focused on publishing content around gaming and TV shows.

According to a report by Variety, the company employs around 500 people, and the layoffs have affected roughly 10% of its staff across different sites. Employees were caught off-guard by this surprise announcement made by CEO Perkins Miller during an all-hands meeting, as per Kotaku.

The job cuts come months after Fandom acquired a host of brands — Comic Vine, Cord Cutters News, GameFAQs, GameSpot, Giant Bomb, Metacritic, and TV Guide — from Red Ventures in October. Sources told TechCrunch at that time that the size of the deal was around $55 million.

During the acquisition announcement, Fandom said that this deal will help the company “super-serve” its advertising partners and provide fuel for its data platform and gaming e-commerce verticals. Fandom was founded in 2004 by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and entrepreneur Angela Beesley

Some folks like GameSpot entertainment editor Mat Elfring, video producer Jess O’Brien aka “Voidburger”, and graphic designer Justin Vachon tweeted about frustrating layoffs.

We have reached out to Fandom for a comment, and we will update the story if we hear back.

Several gaming and entertainment media outlets have faced layoffs in the last few months. Some IGN staffers were impacted last month while Polygon employees were axed as a part of Vox job cuts in July.

Fandom lays off employees across Giant Bomb, GameSpot and Metacritic by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

As the market of social media influencers is getting bigger in India, the South Asian nation has introduced endorsement guidelines to limit unfair trade practices and misleading promotions on the web.

On Friday, the Department of Consumer Affairs held a press conference to announce new guidelines to make it mandatory for social media influencers to disclose promotional content in accordance with the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

Failing to follow the guidelines will make social media influencers liable for a fine of up to $12,300 (1 million Indian rupees). In the case of repeated offenders, the penalty can go up to $61,600 (5 million Indian rupees), the Indian government department said.

The department specified that the guidelines apply to social media influencers as well as virtual avatars promoting products and services online. The disclosures should be easy to notice in post descriptions where you can usually find hashtags or links. It should also be prominent enough to be noticeable in the content, the department said.

When it comes to promoted content in videos, the department said that disclosures for paid promotions should be placed in the video — not just in the description — and be made in both audio and video format. Influencers must also disclose if they promote a brand, service or product during live streams, per the guidelines.

The department said the disclosures and endorsements should be in the language of the content.

“Today’s guidelines are aimed at social influencers who have a material connection with the brand they want to promote on various social media platforms. So this is an obligation for them to behave responsibly,” consumer affairs department secretary Rohit Kumar Singh told reporters.

The official said the department was in talks with tech companies to deploy some crawling algorithms to identify offenders. Meanwhile, consumers can file complaints if they find an influencer violating the guidelines, the secretary said.

“You can never cover it 100%. This is a cat-and-mouse thing… So, the idea is to protect the interests of the consumers and let him not being taken for a ride by showing him something as unbiased whereas actually, it is a paid thing,” he added.

According to the secretary, the size of the social media influencer market in India in 2022 was $157 million. It could reach as much as $345 million by 2025.

India releases guidelines for social media influencers accepting paid promotions by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch