If you haven’t heard, once prominent gaming site VideoGamer has been criticized endlessly for AI articles and AI authors. Recently, it was discovered that a fully AI-generated author wrote a fully AI-generated review of Resident Evil Requiem, and it landed on Metacritic.
All eyes turned to the site after that, and it was discovered that the site had laid off its human staff after being bought by ClickOut Media, replacing them with AI profiles and articles. I used to work for VideoGamer a few years ago, and learning all this has been deeply heartbreaking.
The VideoGamer Fall From Grace is Tragic
I worked for VideoGamer for several months in 2023, and it was one of the best writing jobs I ever had. Ownership then was highly supportive of writers, making sure they had the games they were writing about to ensure accuracy and the best possible content for audiences.
It was, to this date, one of the smartest and most well-run writing operations I’ve come across, and I have written for 15 different outlets since 2021. Google’s 2023 content update hit so many good websites hard, and I had to leave the job, but I miss writing there every day.
At least, I did. The loose timeline of events is that in 2023, the Google content update stung badly, and some freelancers, myself included, moved on. Eventually, the site was sold to ClickOut Media, a seemingly predatory parent company that infuses its new websites with gambling content and, according to this whole saga, AI articles.
VideoGamer isn’t the only one. The Escapist, Esports Insider, and others have gone down this path following a ClickOut Media takeover. It’s just that VideoGamer used to be a really good website, one I held near and dear to my heart. I first began writing for WePC, another in the ByGamersForGamers network.
My boss wanted to move me over to VG, citing its status as a longstanding and well-respected site as an opportunity for me to really take off. Well, that reputation is totally gone now. My work and others who wrote for the site have seen their work essentially vanish because the site has gone down the AI road.
Google deindexed the site. Go ahead and try to Google it. You won’t find it or any articles from it. Just stories like this one detailing what happened. For all intents and purposes, VideoGamer is gone. They went from a beacon of the games journalism space to a gambling site to being deindexed.
AI is obviously a troubling trend in modern journalism, but rarely has it hit so close to home. This would’ve been unfathomable to me when I was working at VG. It represents the growing threat artificial intelligence poses and the extent to which it has truly infiltrated our spaces.
I won’t stop being proud of having written for VideoGamer. I learned so much from working there with and under fantastic people and excellent writers. It’ll never be removed from my resume despite the complete tanking of its reputation. I might just add the caveat that I worked there before all this happened.
Conclusion
Reading the anecdotes of writers who were there much closer to the transition and who were laid off as the site put up AI authors and articles is heartbreaking. Though I wasn’t there anymore, I know what kind of environment it was and how valuable it is for a writer to be in a place that values them, guides them, and gives them skills they’ll use forever. To see that it is all AI now is unbelievably painful, and I’m sad for a world that doesn’t really have VideoGamer in it.
