Mux Data helped IGN respond to customers and make an informed decision about the player that provided the highest performance for their stack.

Customer

IGN is a video game and entertainment media company owned by Ziff Davis. More than 68 million users visit IGN’s website and apps each month.

Challenge

In the past, IGN users voiced complaints about video playback performance in their comments section. Users even suggested watching IGN’s content on YouTube for a better experience. As a result, IGN decided to take on a new player project, which would involve migrating to a new in-house video player built on top of Video.js and integrating that player with their UI elements using React. IGN was looking for a solution to understand the experience their users were having and to measure the player transition, which led them to Mux Data.

Solution

IGN first started using Mux Data for error reporting and understanding when users had critical playback failures. Additionally, as IGN migrated to the new player, Mux provided a comparison of the performance of the old player vs. the new player. Engineers at IGN integrated Mux into each of these players and ran some benchmarking tests. Based on the data, IGN was able to decide on the player, technology, and vendor that performed best for their video stack.

Results

Mux allowed IGN to very quickly and easily discover longstanding issues that they did not have visibility into before. Through Mux’s Alerting features, IGN has been directed towards the root source of emerging issues. “There have been many occasions where alerts have allowed us to become aware of issues in production deployment affecting the video playback experience, such as problems with the API or changes we made to the player itself,” says a Senior Video Engineer at IGN.