Enthusiast Gaming | Billion-dollar Game Company Paid $2 Per Article, then Fired Everyone

This is the story of Enthusiast Gaming, a billion-dollar game company that paid its writers poverty wages and promised them full-time jobs. After the company exploded in growth, it laid everyone off at Nintendo Enthusiast. Here is a story of broken promises, corporate greed, and worker power. Every aspiring game journalist takes low-paying gigs at gaming websites when they're small. The owner always promises that on the small chance the company grows, everyone will be hired as full-time writers. It makes sense when a website barely has any traffic and isn't profitable. The website is a risk and a passion project for everyone. Frequently, websites grow steadily, but perhaps never catch on in a way that could support a full staff of writers. In our case, our company DID grow astronomically. But instead of giving us the jobs and stock we were promised, a few weeks ago, the writers were fired. The company spent millions of dollars to put on game conventions, but the writers continued getting paid 1 cent per word (about $2 per news article or $10 per feature article). These wages were far below minimum wage because we were treated as independent contractors. Despite the company's rapid growth, its promises were never fulfilled. Let this be a warning: a startup may promise you the moon when it has nothing to give, but there is no guarantee it will deliver on those promises when it finally has the resources to do so. I started writing for Enthusiast Gaming in 2013, almost a decade ago when I was 16 years old. At that age, it was a dream to work at a place that paid me - no matter how little - to write about video games. At 17, I quit my job as a janitor and covered my first E3. Sitting next to IGN, the New York Times, and other publications in the press room made me feel like I had finally made it. Here, I tell the story of how the company treated those that have been there for its entire history. I reflect on the company's rapid growth and the influx of capital. We saw millions of dollars funneling through the company, but my coworkers are still living in poverty. In the last two years, Enthusiast Gaming became a unicorn - worth well over a billion dollars. While the executives were celebrating the rapid growth of the company, those of us that were there from the beginning had little to show for it. And now, we don't have jobs either. Among its websites, EG counts Destructoid, The Escapist, and others. However, after acquiring several big websites, it shut them down. 00:00 Introduction 7:50 Broken Promises 16:00 Acquiring Websites 18:55 Shutting Them Down 21:25 Corporations Don't Care About You 23:30 What Happens Now?

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