The game media industry is at a pivotal crossroads. Major outlets are conglomerating and downsizing, resulting in experienced and budding journalists alike being kicked to the curb amid the homogenization of both trade and consumer publications under the umbrellas of massive corporations.
For reporters, it means constricting career pathways, wage stagnation, and the likelihood of burnout as those who remain are forced to fight for the scraps that are left—all while attempting to cover a titanic industry that only continues to swell.
That spells disaster for readers, too. Fewer voices and outlets can only lead to coverage that lacks breadth, depth, and diversity. That isn’t to say those still plying their trade aren’t doing important work, but it is simply impossible to cover a cultural, artistic, and economic beat that continues to grow at such a rapid pace with a resource pool that only seems to dwindle with each passing day.
The numbers—at least, as I suspect they’re viewed in the corporate offices of Ziff Davis, Valnet, and others—simply do not add up. So what now?
The upshot (if you can call it that) of widespread layoffs and degeneration across the media landscape has been the rise of worker-owned (often reader-funded) independent outlets that are attempting to prove it remains possible to carve out a sustainable career in journalism in 2025 by publishing informative, engaging, and personable reporting while shunning the insatiable growth mindset.
“Live or die, we’ll do it blogging the way we want”
One such outlet is Post Games, the solo project of former Polygon editor-in-chief Chris Plante, who established the weekly ad-supported podcast to deliver NPR-style interviews in 90 minutes or less. Post Games content is free to access, although it’s possible to subscribe for $5 per month to access bonus segments, video episodes, and other perks.
Speaking to Game Developer, Plante explains they passed 1,000 paid subscribers at around the five-month mark but has no wish to turn that early success into infinite growth. Instead, he intends to ensure the business remains “microscopic.”
“I don’t have a desire to grow any time soon. My only goal is to create a sustainable business that allows me to tell stories that matter to my listener,” he adds.
Plante says going independent has enabled him to tell stories that were simply incompatible with the expectations of a major website like Polygon, which has fundamentally different business needs. “It’s not the switch to independent media that changed what I cover. What’s responsible for the shift is the change in business model and audience size,” he continues. “At a large publication that depended on ad revenue, I needed to create stories that appeal to a colossal audience of gamers. At a much, much, much smaller publication, my goal is to serve a small audience, but to make things that they love enough to pay for each month.
“For example, at Polygon, millions of readers appreciated our high-quality guides. But they were unlikely to pay for them, since other guides (while not always of the highest quality) were easily and freely available elsewhere. With Post Games, a comparably small audience of listeners wants to learn the nitty-gritty stories behind NSFW game development or the Atari CEO’s plan to save the old brand, but since they can’t find that depth elsewhere, they’re willing to subscribe to the free podcast RSS or pay $5 a month for extended episodes on Patreon.”
Being able to tell stories that might have been deemed off-limits in the corporate sphere was a similarly attractive proposition for People Make Games (PMG) founder, Chris Bratt. The UK-based independent video publication was founded by Bratt in 2018 and currently has over 3,000 paying subscribers on Patreon.
Bratt says those subs pay for all costs associated with PMG’s extensive reporting—which often requires the team to spend numerous months pursuing a single story. This is not normal within the world of conventional, corporate media.
“We just did a story that took about six months to complete, involved flights from the UK to Croatia and we also brought on board a script editor and a media lawyer to guide us through the process as well. There’s simply no way we could have requested that sort of budget in my previous job and so that story would likely not have happened,” says Bratt.
Like Plante, Bratt says PMG doesn’t have any formal growth targets. “I suppose I’m aware that we don’t publish many videos in a year—perhaps five or six—and so if I had one personal goal for 2025, it’d be for me to be able to look back at the work we’ve done over the last 12 months and feel proud of the stories we have chosen to dedicate our time to. Other than that, we need to make sure our funding stays reasonably stable,” he continues.
“We’ve been very lucky to create jobs for ourselves on PMG that we really enjoy and that we really care about. For me, sustainability is about protecting that feeling from whatever other motivations may seek to disrupt it. Growth for growth’s sake feels like an absurdly easy way to turn all of this into something we don’t actually want to do.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Chase Taylor-Carter, co-founder of independent tabletop game outlet Rascal News, who stresses that independence also protects writers from the fleeting whims of corporate owners.
“Worker ownership means that we survive or fail on our own terms, not because an executive we’ve never met is ‘pivoting’ into the latest technology and decides they no longer need writers. It also means that we can work directly with paying subscribers—who we cheekily call our stakeholders—to fashion a version of digital journalism that understand audience needs and the mercurial shape of the internet,” he says. “Our position is precarious, but the freedom earned is incredibly gratifying. Live or die, we’ll do it blogging the way we want.”
“The success of larger legacy publications is often placed in opposition to the interests of their readership”
In some instances, the rise of independent outlets was born out of a desire for change. In other cases, necessity became the calling card—but all roads seemingly lead back to a conflict between reporters who entered the profession to tell stories that speak to readers, only to find themselves cut adrift and admonished in a corporate landscape that actively dismantles that ideology.
“The success of larger legacy publications is often placed in opposition to the interests of their readership or the welfare of their workers. Worker-owned publications typically have a greater vested interest from the people making the content, and can place those same priorities in parallel with each other,” says Alice Jovanée, co-founder of Rogue.
Rogue broke cover earlier this year and was formed by a group of former Polygon writers who were laid off after the website was sold to Valnet by Vox Media. Jovanée explains the website’s definition of sustainability stresses “equity, transparency, and empathy.”
“We all want the site to succeed, and we’re all vested partners in that success, but that can never come at the expense of anyone’s mental or physical well-being,” she adds. “We provide a detailed outline of our compensation in our mission statement, but it boils down to everyone getting a mutually agreed-upon number of shares of our monthly revenue after expenses. Freelancers are paid a flat rate that will never be less than the value of a single share. No financial information is private within the members of Rogue, so everyone knows where the money is going.”
Aftermath is another independent, worker-owned outlet that emerge in the wake of layoffs—this time at Kotaku. Co-founder Luke Plunkett says the decision to establish the website was essentially “forced” on the team after they were jettisoned by former employer G/O Media, who he claims were “only interested in making a line go up.”
Like many of their peers, the Aftermath team sought to learn from everything they hated about their previous roles. “Stuff like pageviews and uniques, which we lived off at sites like Kotaku, are almost worthless metrics to us. The only numbers that really matter are newsletter subscribers and, more importantly, paying subscribers, since they’re pretty much our sole source of income at the moment,” he explains.
“We can write what we want to write. Nobody is shaping our coverage, nobody is telling us to tone something down, or ‘both sides’ an issue, and nobody is making us rush to hit a deadline. We’re in complete control of everything that goes on the site, which is great for us, but is also a huge reason people subscribe to us; they know they’re getting zero bullshit because there’s nobody in a corner office telling us what not to do (we don’t have an office!).”
“Precarity dwarfs the capacity of every working journalist”
Plunkett says he would love to see a decline in traditional corporate media in exchange for a rise in independent outlets, but concedes getting there might be tricky. Some of the associated challenges are universal. Almost everybody I spoke with agreed it remains hard to manage your workload when you’re tasked with not only being a reporter but essentially running an entire business. Burnout, then, remains a huge risk.
There is also the awkward task of convincing people to pay for something they have become accustomed to receiving for free. I doubt there is a single reporter who doesn’t believe their work is worth at the very least a few dollars a month (none of these sites are charging big bucks), but consumers might feel differently.
So, what’s in it for them? According to Game File founder Stephen Totilo, who established the newsletter (which generates an annual gross of over $140,000, before Substack takes 10 percent and payment processor Stripe takes 3 percent) after departing Axios, there is ample reason to support independent journalism.
“True, honest, earnest, fearless, curiosity-driven reporting and criticism of video games can be valuable. The highest quality execution of such work largely costs money to produce. Reporters gotta eat. Critics (most of them) need to wear clothes,” he says. “But the media business–not just the games media business but the whole enterprise–is a rickety operation where profits are meager and even the mightiest publications would not be able to rake it in without the help of ancillary businesses such as recipe apps and Wordle. Therefore, all independent media really is is an attempt to produce the work I described in a way that can survive financially.”
Therein lies a perhaps lesser-discussed barrier for entry. Almost everyone I spoke to was an established reporter with years (and often decades) of experience, and they all acknowledge the inherent risk of going independent. How, then, can more inexperienced writers hope to chart a similar path—or, at the very least, learn from their more veteran peers, who might not have the resources to start anything resembling a newsroom?
“While independent media can in some ways take the place of faltering corporate outlets, it has so far involved a smaller number of people, many of whom, like me, have the benefit of years’ of reader recognition of my byline,” continues Totilo. “A shift into independent journalism for me was risky but had decent odds of paying a full-time wage. Someone who is not known in the field faces far worse odds. That is why I cheer the sight of outlets such as Aftermath bringing aboard more writers and why I began working with freelancers at Game File earlier this year earlier than I had planned. It’s crucial for independent media to find ways to lift up others who also might be able to produce great journalism and criticism.”
Totilo also underlines some of the other challenges of being a smaller—and in his case, often solo—operation. “The biggest drawback is not having a second reporter to bounce stories off of, to pool resources (and sources!) to enhance my ability to get the most accurate and interesting stories to readers. It’s also hard to switch from writing brain to self-editing brain, hence typos. Not every independent outlet is a solo operation, of course, but me being solo impacts my work far more than me being independent,” he adds.
Then there are the legal risks. Often, corporate owners will have internal legal teams that can protect journalists (and by extension their sources) when publishing investigative or potentially inflammatory pieces that might rub some of the industry’s more litigious companies or personalities the wrong way. Even when an independent site can afford to stump up for legal advice, the costs for even a standard pass can be eye-watering. For instance, PMG recently spent £3,000 on legal fees earlier this year before it felt comfortable publishing a documentary.
The pitfalls of independent journalism are there for all to see—and yet, what else can those reporters being forced to plunge into the career maelstrom by trigger-happy corporate employers do but scramble for a lifeboat? The hope is that those who manage to find safe harbor will eventually be able to guide others to shore.
“Precarity dwarfs the capacity of every working journalist, from single-person newsletters up to the damn New York Times,” says Taylor-Carter. “We cannot simply job create our industry out of existential threat when the problems include fascists’ ire and near-complete capture by hypercapitalists. Burdening yourself with that mantle is simply unhelpful and actively self-destructive. Instead, you do what all wise radicals suggest: focus on immediate ability.
“Platform one writer, one voice whose lived experience or identity would otherwise disqualify them from legacy media. Accept a freelance piece or two when the money makes sense, and treat that assignment with all the solemnity and rigor you can muster. It won’t be enough to solve the problem, but our peers grow in number every day and reach out their hands, too. I am the benefactor of outlets like Into the Spine, Unwinnable, and the site now known as Endless Mode. Their dedication to fostering talent kept this industry alive, if only just. I’ll be lucky if one person cites Rascal when it’s their turn to wax long on their professional path.”
