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:

  • abdominable@lemm.ee
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    5 days ago

    The publishers made them. If you don’t have an early review ready the second a game releases, nobody cares about your review. Publishers knew that and would blacklist anyone that gave them bad reviews. No early copies means no day one reviews.

    So all that are left are places like IGN that will never give a score lower than 6/10 for the largest dog shit games in existence.