Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.10-001341/https://aftermath.site/video-games-journalism-2025

We’ve (sadly) covered a lot of games media stories thatinvolve writers being laid offsites being shuffled around and sometimes even whole companies shutting down. For Inside Baseball week, I figured it might be a good time to check in with some of the few people left still making a living in video games journalism.

I spoke with a number of writers and voices who are a) drawing a full-time salary writing or talking about video games, and b) are working at what I’d call a “major” site, the big ones with historical brands that are still in a position to be paying people decent wages. These folks are the lucky few survivors, those in jobs that a decade ago were relatively common but which today–thanks to the aforementioned layoffs and closures, not to mention other contractions like a growing reliance on freelance and guides– are increasingly scarce.

I asked a number of questions about their past, present and, perhaps most pressing, their immediate future, with their answers to each below. To protect their identities and jobs their names have been changed, and outlets omitted where requested. By way of introduction, I spoke with:

  • misk@sopuli.xyzOP
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    5 days ago

    When it was still possible to support yourself from journalism you could see concessions being made and certain news being definitely sponsored but it was never as bad as it is now. If you subscribe over RSS you can see how much crap is being created - every new game release means my feeds are flooded with dozens of „Best places to farm underpants in Zenless Zone Zero” or „How to beat minor boss in episode 27”. Google broke the internet.

    • Lembot_0001@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      We had walkthroughs for that. But now everything must be a 20 minute video. So not Google overall but concretely YouTube is to blame.