Video games Journalism Layoffs Hit Inverse, The Verge

Well, it would not be a brand new 12 months if there weren’t a recent hell–today, writers on the gaming part of Bustle Digital Group’s Inverse mentioned the part has been closed, and layoffs affected Vox-owned The Verge’s gaming protection as properly.

According to a former Inverse author, the closure impacts three writers and the location’s gaming editor. That editor, Shannon Liao, confirmed the information on Bluesky, alongside others. (Liao beforehand labored with Aftermath co-founder Nathan and me at The Washington Post’s gaming vertical Launcher, which was shut down in 2023.) The former author informed Aftermath they have been informed in a Zoom name that the corporate is “‘divesting’ from gaming content,” language echoed by different laid-off writers on social media at this time. (Update, 1/16/26, 1:27pm–One Inverse employee has mentioned they nonetheless have a job on the website, although their function will “be changing significantly.”)

They say this leaves Inverse with a “skeleton crew Entertainment Team.” Bustle purchased Inverse in 2019, which included layoffs; since then, BDG has seen a rash of layoffs so in depth that opening tabs about them is threatening to crash my browser, together with in 2020, 2022, 2023, and 2024, a number of of which affected Inverse particularly. BDG briefly revived Gawker, sister website of Aftermath’s founders’ earlier house Kotaku, in 2021, after which shuttered it in 2023. BDG proprietor Bryan Goldberg, in the meantime, owns a foolish hat.

“Management had been really telling us the last few months that numbers have been rebounding,” the previous author informed Aftermath. “But Inverse has always kind of been the black sheep of BDG, because we were so different from all of their other brands. Personally, I’ve always gotten the sense they just didn’t really know what to do with us, despite our numbers justifying our existence.”

In different dangerous information, Vox-owned The Verge’s gaming author Ash Parrish introduced on social media that she’d been laid off at this time. (Parrish beforehand labored with Aftermath’s co-founders at Kotaku.) Last May, Vox offered its gaming website Polygon to Valnet. Vox additionally had rounds of layoffs in 2024 and 2025.

Update, 1/16/25, 4:30pm– The Vox Media Union wrote in an announcement that two union members from The Verge, three from Pop Sugar, and three from Eater have been laid off at this time, however that these figures are “not including a number of out-of-unit employees.” The union’s message additionally notes that Vox has carried out away with its “centralized Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI+) team, redistributing that work across the People team and leadership, and keeping Employee Resource Groups as simply Slack spaces without formal lead roles or any standalone budgets,” a transfer that follows within the footsteps of varied corporations since Trump took workplace.

That media homeowners do not know what to do with their gaming protection is nothing new, however seeing them proceed to flail round, impacting the lives of writers within the course of, is each heartbreaking and embarrassing. That we’re so early within the new 12 months appears like an indication we’re in for an additional tough 12 months for journalism, although I’d like to be confirmed fallacious.