Who owns IGN?

Created in September 1996 as the Imagine Games Network, the IGN content network was founded by the publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint and began as five individual websites within Imagine Media: N64.com (later renamed ign64.com), PSXPower, Saturnworld, Next-Generation.com, and Ultra Game Players Online.

IGN's current CEO is Peer Schneider, who is their former editor-and-chief.

In 1999, Imagine spun its online division into an entirely new company called Snowball, headed by Mark Jung. Not too long after that, the company announced it had secured $35 million in additional financing, adding it to the roughly $30 million in private equity funding it had lined up throughout the year.

The next year, Snowball.com went public, raising $75 million in its IPO and slipping onto the NASDAQ just as the door was beginning to slam on the Internet party.

IGN Entertainment experienced continued success being one of the first websites to offer subscription-based services until around 2003, during which the "dot.com bubble" burst. To stay afloat, IGN Entertainment went private and reshifted the company.

By the summer of 2005, IGN Entertainment filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission announcing its intention to take the company public again. Currently, the largest shareholders in IGN include Morgan Stanley, Bank Of America Corp, Mml Investors Services, Llc, and Wells Fargo Company.