Short answers, pulled from the story.
IGN was launched on the 29th of September 1996 by media entrepreneur Chris Anderson, originally operating as the Imagine Games Network inside Imagine Media. Publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint founded the underlying content network, which began as five separate platform-specific websites.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation acquired IGN in September 2005 for $650 million. News Corp. later sold IGN Entertainment to Ziff Davis on the 4th of February 2013, with financial terms undisclosed.
IGN has changed its review scoring system four times. It started with a 0.1-to-10.0 scale, shifted to a 20-point scale in August 2010, moved to a 100-point scale in September 2012, and returned to a simple 1-to-10 scale in January 2020.
In August 2018, IGN dismissed reviewer Filip Miucin after finding substantial similarities between his review of Dead Cells and a video by YouTube channel Boomstick Gaming. IGN removed all of Miucin's work on the 14th of August 2018, and on the 19th of April 2019 Miucin admitted plagiarism on his own YouTube channel.
As of 2021, IGN operates 28 editions in 25 languages. The US, UK, and Australia editions are run by Ziff Davis subsidiaries, while all other regional editions are operated by franchised local publishers.
IGN Pro League was a professional esports circuit launched in 2011, running tournaments for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, ShootMania Storm, and League of Legends. IGN cancelled it on the 6th of March 2013, citing an inability to compete with the growing number of esports events. Blizzard Entertainment acquired the IPL's staff and assets on the 8th of April 2013.