Comment on More than 1,200 games journalists have left the media in the last two years | VGC

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Um, that’s how it always should have been. That’s how journalism in general works, going back since pretty much the dawn of newspapers: readers pay for copy, and advertisements subsidize it.

Like the games industry, publications that cover video games have been rocked by a turbulent market since the highs of the COVID-19 pandemic. Media owners like IGN, Fandom, Gamer Network, and Valent have all cut jobs in the past year.

Is it turbulent though? This article goes over video game spending by year, and it has largely plateaued since 2019. There was a pretty big jump in 2020 due to the pandemic, but the market seems to have returned to a normalish trajectory and mobile revenue seems to be plateauing (I guess it’s saturated?).

I think what happened is that people are shifting where they get their information from. Instead of relying on game journalists, who seem to be paid by game devs (hence why any big game rarely gets below 7/10), they rely on social media, who theoretically aren’t paid by game devs (there’s plenty of astroturfing though). The business model where they’re not paid by game devs should always have been the case, since when people are deciding what games to buy, they clearly would prefer a less biased source.

IMO, games journalism should have multiple revenue streams, such as:

They can get very far before needing to run ads. Produce quality journalism and have some additional revenue streams and it’ll work out.

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