Josh123914 said:
Well ever since Gamergate started advertisers have been in a bit of a pickle.
Gaming websites targetted at gamers suddenly were blasting their own demographic, with thousands within that demographic e-mailing said companies NOT to support said sites.
In a climate like that, websites will take whatever ad revenue they can get, which usually means less money. Now, this wouldn't just affect Polygon, Kotaku and Gamasutra, no. With a few big guns going cheap, and no guarantee other sites wouldn't start posting the same economically suicidal stuff it drives the entire market of game site ad revenue down.
Defy Media..... is a whole other story upon itself, but suffice to say they are willing to cut the fat when need be. If the Escapist wasn't breaking even before the "restructuring", then it is now (or at the very least preparing for worse ad deals). Some of IGN's crew leaving last month was no coincidence. I'm predicting that bigger sites are preparing for a cold snap of bad ad revenue, with other sites not (presumably hoping to wait it out), but those like The Escapist and IGN letting people go before things get too bad.
So I think this is what's happened to the Escapist. Basically, the "Gamers are Dead" articles set off a lot of e-mail campaigns and boycotts, which baffled a lot of advertisers, who either pulled out or demanded they pay less for ad space.
This left many sites with less revenue (despite whether or not your site has been the one publishing them) and so gaming sites with ambivalent owners deciding they should save money and fire people now rather than wait for things to get worse.
How's that? Can someone with a degree in Economics or Finance let me know if I'm in the ballpark here?
*Waves hand*
It was never all that profitable to begin with, in all honesty. That's why content providers are on freelancer contracts, and was the source of the Extra Credits debacle - there's no money in it.
In terms of ads, I think that a certain browser tool hurts site revenue more than complaints, and the demographic that uses sites like this are more likely to use aforementioned tool. I don't use it, but right now there's only one small ad on the page, for an entertainment multipass thing. I've heard that in other countries the ads are often inappropriate or intrusive, which says to me that the people you'd expect to be advertising on this site already weren't. I doubt that angry young men emailing companies to pull advertising had that much effect in the long term.
I think the days of gaming websites and the larger community are mostly at an end now. There's a lot of toxicity around the subject, and both sides put each other off, while the on-the-fencers just want to avoid the discussion. The Escapist, in it's vague attempt to be neutral, tried to please everybody and ended up pleasing nobody.