Industry-wide cuts aren’t just gutting development studios — they’re hollowing out the media that covers them. Over the past two years, at least 1,200 writers and editors have exited games journalism, collateral damage from a broader employment crisis.

When people picture layoffs in gaming, they usually see programmers and artists on a blockbuster triple-A team. The reality runs wider: marketing departments, engine-tech providers, HR staff, educators — and yes, the press — have all been pulled into the churn. Since the jobs crisis took hold, the games media has been bleeding talent, and for once, we have hard numbers to show the scale.

Those figures come via Press Engine, a platform thousands of reporters use to find press materials, studio contacts, and review keys. According to VGC’s analysis of its database, another 600 journalists disappeared from the rolls over the last 12 months — on top of the 600 lost the previous year. That puts the two-year toll at roughly 1,200 departed professionals, and remember: that’s just what one tool can track.

It Can Be A Problem For Indie Or Mid-Sized Video Games

Measured proportionally, Press Engine logs about a 25% headcount drop at Tier-1 outlets — the seven-figure-audience sites such as IGN, Polygon, and GameSpot. With fewer reporters, fewer stories get told — especially about projects without blockbuster marketing behind them. Mid-tier and indie games, which have long relied on specialist coverage to break through, face even steeper odds of being noticed at all.

Press Engine co-founder Gareth Williams told VGC that mainstream coverage has been consolidating around a short list of tentpoles while niche and independent titles struggle for oxygen. As he puts it, “A combination of factors has led to the loss of some of the brightest talent in video game journalism.” He also points to search changes that punish evergreen service content such as guides — historically a lifeline for web publishers — compounding the ad-market slowdown.

Discussion threads on ResetEra echo the concern: creators on YouTube and Twitch can’t simply backfill the breadth and rigor of a shrinking press corps. Livestreamers and influencers may excel at amplification, but they typically don’t run beats, verify claims, or file reviews to a newsroom schedule.

Layer in AI’s rapid rise — which threatens to siphon search traffic from long-tail articles — and the dependency on platforms that can reroute audiences overnight, and you get a precarious business model just as newsroom experience walks out the door.

The headline number — 1,200 departures in two years — doesn’t capture the institutional knowledge lost with every exit. That’s editors who can spot a trend before it breaks, reporters who know which pitch decks to ignore, and critics who can argue a game on its own terms. Rebuilding that capacity takes time, the industry may not have.

For now, the best hope is that publishers, platforms, and readers recognize the value of an independent press — and invest accordingly — before the coverage map gets any smaller.

Source: 3DJuegos