How many, if any, human writers remain at these sites is unclear, in part because former employees were apparently forced to sign NDAs about the layoffs in order to receive severance payouts. Cat Bussell, the former Senior Gaming editor at Videogamer, posted on Bluesky that she and her team were laid off from the site. Lloyd Coombes of The Escapist wrote that he had been a victim of redundancy as well.
For those who’ve never heard of Clickout Media, this seems at least partially by design. While the company has purchased several outlets in recent years, it doesn’t directly advertise its involvement, as was the case when it scooped up Adventure Gamers last year and filled it with reviews for online casinos. This process of stealthily purchasing websites and burying them in an avalanche of coverage on slot machines and “casino game guides” seems to be the outfit’s modus operandi. After being purchased by Clickout, Videogamer’s tagline was changed from “All About Video Games” to “All About Video & Casino Games,” and the front page now features articles with riveting headlines like “Best Crypto Casinos in Malaysia for 2026.” That a marketing firm owns several journalistic outfits is inherently a conflict of interest, and the overlap with the shady arena of online gambling isn’t helping the company’s case.
Meanwhile, The Escapist, which has gone through a tumultuous last few years, is similarly littered with articles on slot machines. In 2023, many former staffers left the site to form Second Wind, an employee-owned outlet. This happened in response to the site’s then-owners, Gamurs Group, firing its editor-in-chief, Nick Calandra. According to Aftermath, Gamurs sold the site to an unnamed “private investor” last year, which turned out to be Clickout.
The layoffs at these Clickout-owned sites are just the latest in a beleaguered games media that has seen frequent mass layoffs in recent years, particularly after corporate acquisitions. For instance, last year, Valnet purchased Polygon before laying off much of its staff. And Gamurs Group conducted layoffs at Destructoid, Twinfinite, and more last April.
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