Games Journalists Literally Roasted Alive in Latest Layoffs

Paste Magazine:

There used to be websites. Their employees would write about stuff, sometimes make videos or podcasts, and typically aim to keep their readers informed about whatever topic the site was focused on, and maybe even a little entertained, too. Whenever anybody visited these sites the owners would get a little bit of money from digital ads, and the bigger and more successful sites also sold more lucrative ad packages directly to advertisers; that money would be used to pay the writers and podcasters and video makers whose work brought in the readers. There were websites for all kinds of interests, and some of them focused on videogames; two of the better and bigger ones to do that were called Polygon and Giant Bomb. And now, as of this week, both of those sites as we know them are basically over with.

Earlier today it was announced that Valnet, a media company that owns a network of pop culture and entertainment sites that includes Collider and Screen Rant, acquired Polygon from Vox, and immediately laid off almost the entire staff.

Honestly, I don’t know much about Giant Bomb. Frankly, I don’t know much about games journalism. I haven’t followed the latest industry happenings for almost two decades, only taking a brief re-interest in the subject during Gamergate.

Unfortunately, Gamergate ran into the harsh reality of neo-liberal capitalism. It doesn’t matter what the peasants want, when Blackrock controls $12 trillion in assets. They have a license to print money, simply by controlling every side of oligopolies, such as Pepsi-Co and Coca-Cola, and jacking up the prices to guarantee profits. If they feel like spending billions to push their zionist trash, there’s not that much any individual consumer can do about it except ignore it.

As for the zionist trash from Polygon specifically, look no further than the pronouns in their bio.

The modern day internet has largely censored those speaking truth to power. In its stead there is a cottage industry of alt-lite types, who, while never pointing at the Fink behind the curtain, do a decent job of cataloging the anti-White/heterosexual seething coming from these propagandists. I was so out of the loop that I didn’t even know where to find those guys, but eventually stumbled upon KotakuInAction. From there I found an article on “Refinery 29,” a games journalism website that I have never heard of before.

Archived (Refinery 29):

To sum Robinson up in 160 characters or less, just turn to her Twitter bio: “She/Her. Bi/Pan Femme. Gaming, Anime, & Curly Hair. USM History Alum. Twitch + Logitech G Partner. Womanist. Hoochie.” “I carry these titles with me on social media almost as a warning so that people kind of know what to expect,” she says. “I have to tell people, ‘Hey this is part of me. You’re not separating this. Whatever you think may fly over here won’t.’”

To really get a sense of who she is though, look at her feed. Her tweets and retweets are both blunt and fearless, and they might not be for everyone. Robinson is okay with that. “You’re not going to tickle some people’s fancy being outspoken or tweeting things like I do when I say, ‘White male gamers were a mistake,’” she says. But her messages on behalf of marginalized communities — whether celebrating Black voices, protesting against ableism, or advocating for women’s, queer, and Indigenous rights — will catch your attention and for good cause.

I am truly shocked that gamers en masse have abandoned these sites.

Less than 10% the interest – as measured through Google trends – as they did mid aughts to early teens.

There are a multitude of factors leading to game journalist layoffs. While it is true that their growth never kept pace with the games industry, because everyone hates them, it stands to reason that if the games industry itself is undergoing massive layoffs, that’s going to somewhat impact the industry covering the games industry.

Wikipedia (2022-2025 Layoffs):

The video game industry experienced mass layoffs in the mid 2020s, peaking in January 2024.^[1] Over 10,500 jobs were lost in 2023, and an additional 14,600 jobs were lost in 2024.

Wikipedia includes a very helpful graphic of layoffs by quarter. We’ve seen 33.5k job losses since the start of 2022.

To be clear, in 2021 the games industry was still growing, largely fueled by temporary Covid conditions. There were some small layoffs here and there, as there always will be, but the above image does not show net job creation/losses. That’s harder to find, although I did stumble upon this academic article which counts “22,000 jobs erased since the start of 2022,” which feels about right as a count of net hired/fired.

I’ve struggled to find a reliable measurement of the total workforce of the games industry. About the best I could manage was this other Wikipedia article.

Wikipedia (Video Game Industry):

In 2017 in the United States, which represented about a third of the global video game market, the Entertainment Software Association estimated that there were over 2,300 development companies and over 525 publishing companies, including in hardware and software manufacturing, service providers, and distributors. These companies in total have nearly 66,000 direct employees. When including indirect employment, such as a developer using the services of a graphics design package from a different firm, the total number of employees involved in the video game industry rises above 220,000.^[6]

The direct employees are what we care about, since no one counts the layoffs at ancillary companies as games industry layoffs. The above numbers are from 2017, but even if we doubled these numbers, the net losses of ~22k would be almost 20% of the entire industry, and it’s highly unlikely that the workforce really did double.

Below is a graph from Statista, which purports to show the total amount of people working in all the industries even tangentially related to games. No, that’s not direct jobs, but hopefully it serves as a decent proxy to measure growth. Eyeballing the graph, we saw roughly 25% growth from 2017-2023. If we assume that amount of growth for direct jobs, then more than a quarter of all games industry jobs have been destroyed. Ouch.

You have to become a member to see all the details, so I screencapped the above.

The layoffs are continuing daily through 2025, albeit at a slower pace.

CCN (April 30th):

The video game industry has faced significant upheaval in recent years, with mass layoffs affecting major companies, such as Microsoft Gaming, Electronic Arts and Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Despite this, a new report has found that the majority of game developers support implementing AI into game development.

I’ve written quite a bit about the “AI” hype. In short, I think that, in the foreseeable future, no serious game will have AI created assets in a finished product. However, on a large team, there is definitely a place for one or two people whose job is to wrangle the AI tard to create prototype assets to help with development. 

That’s pretty much the only use that I see. Replacing programmers with AI sounds like a recipe for disaster.

If these companies are using AI as a way to bullshit investors into thinking they’ll get miraculous returns, that’s one thing. If they actually believe the hype, prepare for reality to bite hard in the next few years.

On Tuesday, April 29, it was reported that Electronic Arts (EA) had laid off 300 staff members from its organization, including 100 from its Respawn division.

In an announcement, Respawn said it was cancelling two early-stage incubation projects and laid off a number of individuals from its Apex Legends and Star Wars teams.

Shortly after, IGN reported wider cuts to multiple EA teams, including customer support and marketing.

…

In early April, Ubisoft Leamington, the British arm of French video game giant Ubisoft, announced its official closure.

…

Meanwhile, Canadian video game developer Eidos-Montréal plans to lay off “up to 75 valuable members.”

 it does not “have the capacity to entirely reallocate them to our other ongoing projects and services.”

As an aside, apparently (((Activision))) actually did put AI slop in a finished game. Their six fingered Santa zombie loading screen for COD:BLOPS 6 has been confirmed as a neural net creation. I suppose that I held AAA game developers in too high of a regard. Nevertheless, the point stands that no game should be using AI created assets in the finished product. 

Another problem is that games journalism never progressed to the point of creating their own Siskel and Ebert. I always despised them, and movie critics more broadly, but they at least had a certain amount of seriousness and cultural relevance. The queers at IGN, Kotaku, or wherever else simply do not compare. 

Creating games is difficult. As a developer, I don’t expect critics to help with the nuts and bolts, but it would sure be nice if they could provide literally any insight at all. Occasionally, some rando on YouTube will create a worthwhile breakdown of a genre, which may or may not be helpful. The queer latinx folx over at Gamespot? Not so much. 

Finally, Hamas should be thanked for their crippling attack on the Butthole-Left. More specifically, on their funding. Since October 7th, leftoids have faced a conundrum. Their anti-White hatred is funneled through psuedo-intellectual gibberish that makes it impossible for them to ignore the genocidal apartheid state of Israel. As a result, funding for “left wing” groups has been decimated. Schlomo does not appreciate his retarded golems snapping at the hand that feeds them. 

When you’re Larry Fink, and you control trillions in assets, paying the 100k/y salaries of some propagandists is nothing. Paying $10 million for Dustborn, or even $100 million for Concord is hunky dory. But if those arrogant Golems criticize your precious genocidal ethnostate? Well, they can hit the unemployment line.  

Racially attacking White People through the guise of anti-racism? Great. More please. Attacking the most racist country on Earth? Cool it with the anti-semitic remarks. 

No one trusts their reviews, even if apolitical. They have nothing insightful to say. The consumers hate their politics, and now so do their owners. These are useful idiots who have outlived their usefulness. It’s over.

In truth, I haven’t bothered thinking about these “people” for so long that I only get a very mild schadenfreude from their suffering.