Zero Punctuation Ends As ‘The Escapist’ Faces Mass Resignations After EIC Firing

When people ask me how to get into games journalism these days, my main piece of advice is “don’t.” I’m really not kidding, as while I am privileged to be where I am, it’s an almost impossible path to walk given the state of the industry and the instability found within.

Case in point, a wild scene unfolded last night as long-time gaming site The Escapist fired some of its team members, including EIC Nick Calandra, for reportedly not meeting goals set by its parent company Gamurs.

After Calandra was fired, Escapist staff members, contributors and producers all took to Twitter to announce they were also leaving the site, with many of them indicating they would be working on some new project with Calandra directly.

The departures and firings essentially cleaned out the entirety of The Escapist’s video department, including most significantly at all, the departure of Yahtzee Croshaw, the voice of Zero Punctuation, one of the oldest and most famous game criticism video series, and one I grew up watching long before I started doing this for a living. Croshaw resigned, but he does not own the rights to Zero Punctuation itself, so whatever he does next, it will be without that branding. Though it’s obvious the branding can’t survive without him, even if The Escapist retains it.

By all accounts Calandra was a great EIC, and clearly inspired a lot of loyalty in those working for him, given the events of last night. Gamurs feels like yet another company trying to squeeze blood from a stone with likely unreasonable growth targets in an industry where large increases are more or less impossible. Their video section pivoted from native video to mostly YouTube, which can gain more views but produce less revenue, but clearly the entire endeavor ended up backfiring, and now The Escapist does not have a video department at all, it seems.

As of this morning, The Escapist is still publishing new articles, as the site hasn’t lost all its writers or contributors. It remains unclear what level of staff or freelancers remain at the company, and what plans may be to rehire for a new video section. But it’s safe to say that without the old team or an icon like Yahtzee, it might just be over altogether.

As for Calandra and his new project, that’s certainly the more interesting endeavor, as that team has a lot of fans and hopefully they can put something together that works for them and their audience without dealing with corporate neck-breathing. More on that as details emerge. I’ve reached out to Gamurs for comment and will update if I hear back.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.