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The Escapist magazine's entire video team has either been fired or resigned
This is breaking news and I'm no journalist, so bear with me here.
It looks like a bunch of people at The Escapist were fired earlier today (one, two, possibly more). In response, the entire rest of the video team has quit (including Yahtzee, plus all the rest)
The video team has plans to go independent. From their new Discord, they made this statement (from Nick Calandro):
I was fired from The Escapist along with many others today, and in response the entire video team, including Yahtzee, has resigned from The Escapist.
Our plan is to go independent, but we will share more plans on that later this week.
Man what a throwback. I used to watch Zero Punctuation all the time when I was 14. I've kind of forgotten about Escapist, I assumed they went under years ago.
ZP had retained quality throughout the years, while The Escapist had been of varying quality around Yahtzee. I suppose we'll see what happens next, though I'm quite interested in what happened to cause this mass exodus.
Well, if Yahtzee is gone I can't see a future for the brand. Escapist, even at it's best, was sort of ZP and friends.
I wonder if Escapist owns the 'style' of ZP and Yahtz will have to do something new.
Oh well, interesting to see how this plays out... The rest of the way I mean.
This is, like, the third time I've heard this exact news, with one exception, and his name is Yahtzee Croshaw. It's funny because what drew me to the site never was him (it was the longform written content that's long gone now), but even I know if he goes, whatever is left of the place is gone.
I'm really amazed they didn't go under the first time. The first major exodus of content creators was because they just stopped paying people. That was over a decade ago. And then the second one was some kind of infighting between the owners and the employees over gamergate, which you'd think would have also been pretty darned fatal. Especially because even that came off more like a publicity stunt on the owners' part, trying to get some eyeballs on a site that had been circling the drain for years.
According to the linked tweet that Yahtz made, he does not have the rights to ZP, which sucks, but it will allow him to move on to something else.
The brand isn't Zero Punctuation - it's Yahtzee. He could make the exact same show with a different name + new music and every current fan would happily move over.
It's similar to what happened to Andrew Callaghan - it didn't matter that he lost the "all gas no brakes" brand. People easily migrated to wherever he was broadcasting from next.
Back in high school there was a gaming magazine that came with a dvd filled with demos, game trailers, and Zero Punctuation videos. Not having home internet those, and the miscellaneous youtube videos my friend would give me on a flash drive from time to time, are what I watched.
When I did get home internet eventually I subscribed to their youtube channel specifically for Yahtzee. I've watched and enjoyed 2 or 3 of the "Stuff of Legends" videos, but I was really just there for Zero Punctuation.
Or Clarkson, Hammond, and May making The Grand Tour, after their departure from the BBC, who owned the rights to Top Gear. If the show is built around the presenters, people are going to follow the presenters, not the show.
Not sure if you ever watched Cold Take, which I think started this year, but it is excellent. I'm hoping Frost (think that's Sebastian Ruiz?) continues with a similar series, because it easily surpasses ZP for me (which I also still enjoy).
Definitely a fan of Cold Take as well! Here I thought Escapist was trying to finally build out a content schedule that wasn't just ZP (or ZP styled/adjacent) content and then they go and torpedo the whole thing.
I love Cold Take. Frost's cool baritone voice made me initially think George Carlin had returned from the grave and revealed that he'd been a gamer for decades.
Interested to see if there's a spiritual successor to Cold Take or if he does something different.
I could listen to Sebastian Ruiz' voice all day.
I think they mentioned he owns the rights to Cold take and in that case it should be returning, but with a "fresh coat of paint".
The statement was expanded somewhat in the Discord. The top pin:
If it's true that they over-hired, I wonder how this new project will work. It's not like finances get easier when you go independent, so I hope they have a plan. Surely not everyone can be full time.
Personality driven media is brutal.
Mentioned by nickjcal24, who was the editor-in-chief at the Escapist. I can't see if he was the main author of any video series, doesn't look liike it, but presumably he edited them.
Corporate executive morons strike again.
The Escapist was just starting to become good again. Apart from Zero Punctuation, they had a few other good series i was into such as Extra Punctuation, Cold Take, Design Delve, Stuff of Legends, 3 minute reviews, Slightly Something Else podcast, etc. All good content.
Now it looks like almost everyone responsible for the above content has left. So basically rest in pieces, the Escapist. I will look forward to whatever Nick, Yahtzee and the crew come up with next. Good luck to them.
Well that is the final nail for The Escapist. If anyone was paying attention to the Escapist, then you would know that they were having issues with their finances, considering the different money making things that they were pushing, such as YouTube membership and Patreon for uncensored versions of Zero Punctuation were being offered. So I am not surprised that the Escapist had fired them as a way to save money, but that might have killed them in the end. And considering that Yahtzee is the person that had introduced the term "PC master race," more as away to make fun of PC gamers, whatever he is going to do is going to be fine.
Wait Yahtzee coined PC master race?? I’ve always found that whole thing super cringy, so to know it was originally a joke at the expense of the community makes me feel better, lmao
Yeah, it was comparing the "filthy console peasant" to the "glorious PC master race", mocking PC gamers for their attitude of flying high above the internecine fighting of the console wars.
PC Master Race was a joke at first and for whatever reason people took it and just made it a part of their personality lol.
https://pcmasterrace.org/history
It's honestly pretty fun and harmless, or was at first. In general that's kinda what the internet does though tbh lol
It always felt more reactive to me. People used to take console wars really seriously. Then there was just this entire other gaming segment that never really got caught up in it. At the time PCs really could do a lot of cool stuff consoles couldn't. It's easy to see how the idea of PC users just being above the petty squabbling of the console fans caught on.
https://youtu.be/P0dXtOVi2yo?si=z3F7vdL9w3jRAdUl
Update: announcement of Second Wind: https://twitter.com/SecondWindGroup/status/1721934761621381168
Only in the past few months did I get back into watching Zero Punctuation after largely forgetting about it for more than a decade and through that I found some other videos of theirs I liked. Stuff of Legends was a recent addition and exactly the kind of odd stories I love to hear about in gaming, e.g. an EVE Online heist or crashing a funeral in WoW. So while that's disappointing on The Escapist's end I now have a reason to follow them to whatever they're doing next.
They have a new channel already called Second Wind: https://vxtwitter.com/SecondWindGroup/status/1721934761621381168?s=20
I wish them the best of luck. As an aside Yahtzee has a couple of audibooks on Audible which were very entertaining and worth checking out if you like casual sci-fi.
Fucking hell, I can't say I expected this. To think, too, that their Yahtzee Unscripted series only got two episodes before Gamurs tanked everything with their idiocy.
Woah, what? Did I miss a big controversy with them?