Three months after the post was first taken down, IGN has reposted its charity guide with resources for readers who wish to support civilians impacted by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
If you missed the fracas from a few months ago, editorial staff at IGN and Game Informer both posted articles linking to charities that support humanitarian work in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Within hours, both sites saw their posts yanked.
In the weeks that followed, game developers operating on Itch.io would go on to raise almost $900,000 for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
The restoration of IGN’s post follows public criticism from inside and outside the company, both for and against the decision to make the post in the first place. IGN’s Israel branch openly condemned the post in a now-deleted tweet, while employees filed an open letter criticizing IGN management’s overreach in deleting the post.
IGN staff and management appear to have reached a number of compromises and policy changes, many of them are now highlighted in the reposted guide. Said guide also features slightly tweaked language, including a first sentenced massaged to open with the word “civilians,” where it previously read “Palestinian civilians.”
(Palestine is still named elsewhere in the post, the change editorially seems to nod to the fact that civilians who are not Palestinian have been impacted by the conflict.)
The post also does not contain the picture of the Palestinian Flag which IGN briefly featured on its site that day. The featuring of the flag appeared to be another point of contention for some inside IGN and its global affiliates.
The post’s restoration highlights a major win for IGN’s editorial staff, but also shows the tight rope that writers and game developers walk when trying to describe the scope of the conflict. The various means of describing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, and Hamas’ military attacks in response, carry a lot of weight.
It is worth remembering that even as this post goes back up, the Israeli Defense Force is still conducting air strikes on the West Bank in retaliation for machine gun fire during a protest on the region’s security border. Little has also changed in how Israel has approached evictions of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem.