{"id":483048,"date":"2026-02-18T13:12:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T13:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483048\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T13:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T13:12:16","slug":"multiple-gaming-sites-slash-staff-as-owner-pivots-to-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483048\/","title":{"rendered":"Multiple Gaming Sites Slash Staff As Owner ‘Pivots To AI’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clickout Media is a group that buys up gaming sites and then forces them to host endless unmarked advertorial content for gambling sites and casinos. Now the owner of The Escapist, Adventure Gamers, and\u00a0Esports Insider\u00a0is, according to reporting by\u00a0Insider Gaming<\/a>, going to \u201cpivot to AI,\u201d and of course that means firing swathes of staff and demolishing the remains of all the sites it\u2019s ruined.<\/p>\n

\u201cSad to say that my role at The Escapist is up for redundancy,\u201d wrote that site\u2019s\u00a0contributing editor Lloyd Coombes on BlueSky. On LinkedIn he added, \u201cthat means a lot of things that I\u2019m still not quite getting my head around.\u201d Coombes is just one of many people who are losing their jobs as a result of ClickOut\u2019s ridiculous folly. Insider Gaming reports, \u201cIt was said that Clickout Media will be maintaining a skeleton crew of \u2018AI Editors.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s me and my team gone from\u00a0VideoGamer,\u201d says Cat Bussell. \u201cVery sad day. I\u2019ll probably do a bigger post on this later on down the line. Still reeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems that all these sites might be completely wiped out with so many job losses, all to be replaced by the illusion of AI.<\/p>\n

ClickOut is a peculiarly shy company, describing itself as a \u201cPR and marketing agency\u201d despite its acquisition of gaming sites, and focus on crypto and web 3. It\u2019s so shy, in fact, that it keeps its company\u2019s name off the sites it buys, and goes out of its way to hide its ownership, as we discovered last year when the company bought the beloved\u00a0Adventure Gamers<\/a> and reduced it to shilling for online casinos. The site is almost abandoned now, after 27 years of passionate adventure gaming coverage, with the last couple of stories from mid-2025 sitting ghost-like at the top above \u201creviews\u201d of online slot machines.<\/p>\n

The same is true on\u00a0The Escapist, a site that\u2019s been through many iterations from its highbrow beginnings as an online magazine, through its grim pro-GamerGate era, to its most recent form as a solid, well-written gaming news site from people who genuinely care. The staff has demonstrated a special knack for covering lesser-known games among the big hitters, albeit one that is constantly undermined by the enforced inclusion of \u201cguides\u201d for online gambling that all read suspiciously like a robot might have helped. The same is true all over again on Esports Insider, which continues to put out solid journalism about the esports world, in between wildly incongruous articles about stock prices of betting firms. And then there\u2019s the esteemed VideoGamer, which has battled on despite being plagued with casino ad shite.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just gaming sites to which ClickOut commits this vandalism.\u00a0ReadWriteWeb was once a web tech site, launched in 2003 and well-respected, but now it\u2019s just a site pushing sports betting, casinos and poker. It also spent last year buying many, many poker sites<\/a>, as well as\u00a0Gambling Insider<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not able to confirm how many people have lost their jobs today, because as\u00a0Insider Gaming reports, those affected have been required to sign NDAs in order to ensure they receive their severance. We\u2019ve reached out to ClickOut, but based on previous experience, their shyness seems to prevent them from replying to emails, too.<\/p>\n

We wish all the best to everyone affected, in a continuingly grim era for games journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clickout Media is a group that buys up gaming sites and then forces them to host endless unmarked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,195056,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-483048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-clickout-media","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}