@morespikes's comment on 'More gaming journo layoffs'

A quick post for your entertainment.

Dexerto

Dexerto is an e-sports site described as the "TMZ" of e-sports. It has a heavy focus on video game personalities and operates at a revenue of OVER $10 million a year. How does a site that generates less content and research than fricking drama make so much money yet still has to layoff workers by the dozens?!?! Anyone who truly believes that they can turn gaming journ*lism into a full-time job deserves to be fired, but site owners also deserve noogies for being so darn greedy that they are collapsing their own industry. I miss the old internet days where you could follow specific writers you enjoyed. Now it's all churned out articles to meet quotas, resulting in gaming "journ*lism" being nothing more than reposting content from Reddit. Anyways, here's some of the results of the recent layoffs. As you read, remember that these people were paid a living wage to write about video games then without warning were left without a salary.

Gamurs

I've already written about the layoffs at Gamurs, but the truth is that the company is undergoing waves of layoffs and nobody there is safe.

Gamurs owns big gaming sites like Dot Eports, Destructoid, We Got This Covered, The Mary Sue, Prima Games, and Escapist. It has a bad reputation for treating its workers like expendable goods, and a number of articles have been written about it.

https://aftermath.site/the-gamurs-group-games-journ*lism-escapist-dot-esports

https://www.cgmagonline.com/news/gamurs-group-layoffs-without-warning/

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gamurs-group-employees-reportedly-hit-with-more-layoffs

In September, several employees at Gamurs woke up to an email explaining that they must frick off because of Google's changed algorithm.

Here's a roundup of some of the layoff posts over the last year. It's funny because some people get hired, fired, hired again, then fired again. It's like @Patsy making alt accounts to stay on the site after getting banned. Also, they get fired by having access to their accounts snatched without warning.

I've reached my upload limit so I'll post more in the comments below.

Conclusion

It's over for video game journ*lism. The articles you read were written by AI or a fresh-out-of-college intern working as a freelance writer earning $5 for 1000 words. You can choose to either mourn the loss of an industry, or smile as the world burns. Sorry for the lack of Hollys but like I'm struggling to contend with a file upload limit. Lemme know if you want to see more of these.

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morespikes they/them 6d ago #7099809

never was interested in vidya but thought I would like sports journ*lism after getting hooked on Dr. Z's column in early 00s Sports Illustrated (which used to be a great magazine, RIP). But holy shit what a bullet dodged, as I imagine most terminally wordsposting-addicted people on this site are similar in that we didn't end up trying to write for a living.

One of the dudes you posted, he said he churned out 3,500 articles during his time there. 3,500. If I'm generous and I give him 5 years of employment, that's 1825 days, meaning he was posting an average of 1.91 articles a day. And this includes weekends, holidays, sick + personal leave. Realistically he's probably at 3/day of work. That's fricking nuts. You literally can't churn out good articles that quickly. Grantland (another RIP) I'd get maybe 1/2 drops a week from the writers I followed and then maybe on the month you'd get a really nice longform.

I wonder what the no kidding cost would be of actually paying a journ*lism website's staff a living wage, and then how much you would have to charge in monthlys to recoup that. When I ran the numbers for my film company idea they never agreed, just to start it was ~250k/yr of takehome to cover a skeleton staff at 15/hr. This was 2019 and obviously things have only gotten worse since then.