It’s Thursday, September 15, and there’s been another games media culling. This time it’s what seems like the entire editorial team at Fanbyte, including editor-in-chief Danielle Riendeau, producer Paul Tamayo, head of media John Warren and a bunch of staff. Fanbyte was a unique, incisive and often extremely funny site, and whatever it turns into next (if anything) will not be the same. It never is.
Fanbyte’s layoffs happened just days after pretty extensive G4 and Future Publishing layoffs. (disclaimer: I have written reviews for Future-owned PC Gamer.)
On one hand, you might be tempted to justify these layoffs by saying the usual: “the economy’s bad,” or “they didn’t perform,” or “that’s just how it is on this bitch of an earth (the games media industry).” And I get the impulse. It seems like everyone who isn’t doing this as a hobby or side-gig (me) or cobbling together some semblance of a living and a wretched sleep schedule freelancing (most of my friends and peers) has to live with the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, ready to drop down at a moment’s notice and chop up their only-just-recently-gained financial stability, access to insurance, and ability to eke out an existence in some of the most expensive places on earth out of necessity. There has never been a worse time to be looking for work in video game media (unless you’re a guides writer, in which case, inexplicably, everyone’s hiring), and that’s in the context of this industry already being a bastard and a half to get and keep a job in.
But let’s be clear: this wasn’t the Fanbyte editorial team’s fault. By no means. They have been building one of the most interesting video game news and commentary sites on the Internet for years. “Interesting” doesn’t pay the bills? That’s why they’ve also been building up one hell of a brick shithouse in their guides department. They were the whole package, the Real Deal, so to speak, and if that can’t even survive? Well, it’s certainly not a fucking skill issue at that point. Maybe instead of monetizing the rot we collectively need to take a look at some fucking anti-fungal medication for this shit now.
(I’m so fucking mad dude. I’ve watched that site pick up the most fucking talented and insightful critics and creators in this fucking industry over the past three years, and for what?
Deep breaths.)
Inb4 the armchair libertarians: I understand that a business’s job is to make money, and that corporations are required in most cases to make more profit year-over-year. I’m not a fucking baby, I wasn’t born yesterday, and I do get how the system is made up. But in every circumstance, you need to ask yourself what you’re losing in the pursuit of gain. What fucking twisted decision-making leads someone to fire the very people who reliably bring readers in? Who make the site fun to Engage™ with? Who build up an editorial strategy and a content pool that consistently ranks more favorable to regular readers than just about anywhere else on the fucking Internet? What do these suits think is going to happen when the dust settles? That the site will simply continue on, producing the same high level of Content it has for years? When the EIC is gone, the publisher, the head of media, the staff, all gone?
Or maybe Fanbyte no longer fits into ZAM’s business model. I don’t know. Maybe a media where everyone is creative and thoughtful and incisive and doing the kind of journalism/criticism/shitposting that sets the gold standard isn’t the “direction” ZAM and its other corporate buddies at NBCUniversal and Future and Vox Media and Great Hill Partners (and on, and on…) wants to go anymore, if it ever was. Maybe instead they just want another content mill, one of those hellsites extracting hundreds of guides and “reviews” and near-procedurally-generated news stories per day out of freelancers who will do anything that isn’t selling their left kidney for food.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Even under capitalism. Fuck the algorithm. Fuck focus-testing. Fuck analytics-chasing. Fuck Tencent, ZAM, and whoever else decided to make the Internet worse today. Unionize your fucking newsroom. Don’t work for content mills. RIP Fanbyte.