It’s difficult not to lose faith when so much of the system is rigged against support for Palestine in the UK, but god damn, this feels like a massive, vital win.

It took me months, about 495 rides, recovering from a shattered right foot and hacking a folding scooter, but I finally own a Nintendo Switch 2 using points obtained from Citi Bike. Afterwards, it left me questioning the very nature of work. For @aftermath.site. aftermath.site/switch-2-cit...

NEW: A Ubisoft union rep at Solidaires Informatique told me that around 1,200 workers went on strike yesterday to protest a five-day RTO policy and ongoing cost-cutting at the French publisher. The international strike will continue today and tomorrow at Ubisoft studios around the world.

Extremely pleased to bring The Games Press back today with Mothership's @midimyers.com & @zoehhannah.com! We talk about the current state of feminist writing in the games media, whether "subscription fatigue" is real & how they've processed what happened to them & their former coworkers at Polygon.

800 words on newspaper economics in a era where no one will pulp a magazine

We have @jacobgeller.com and @grubb.wtf flying in to Minneapolis for our big ICE Out Charity Stream with @giantbomb.bsky.social! Tune in at 5pm Central as we raise money to protect our neighbors from ICE. youtube.com/live/SMcO71c...

following last week's announcement of a ubisoft restructuring that will lead to layoffs and game cancellations in pursuit of (even more) cost cutting, five french unions representing ubisoft workers have called for a "massive" international strike

Probably the biggest problem with being a game critic is you never hear what other people think of you

🇬🇧✊🌀 Ubisoft : enough is enough! Faced with the arbitrary decision of the CEO who doesn’t even dare talking to employees anymore, unions are calling for a strike on February 10th, 11th and 12th.

Very, very excited for this! If you live near Brighton and would like to come along and hear the two of us get stuck into the weeds on Keza’s latest dive into the history of Nintendo, grab yourself a ticket.

We're launching a website. Jank is an independent PC games website funded by readers. jank.cool If you like funny, thoughtful games journalism and can't stand adverts, deals posts, affiliate links, and other nonsense - Jank is for you.

I really love how this new cohort of audience-funded sites are so clearly designed with readers in mind, rather than advertisers. It loads so quickly! It's so clean! It's a website I want to actually use and spend time with!

Just crossed 50,000 subscribers on my main video essay channel :) thank you for watching and sharing and supporting me in this crazy freelance experience! (btw I still get comments from Polygon fans saying they had NO IDEA I have my own channel now - so if you know any, send 'em my way!)

PMG won the Knickerbocker Award for Best Games Journalism last night at the @nyvgcc.bsky.social! It feels like we've come such a long way since we first launched this thing nearly eight years ago, but winning a journalism award at an event in NEW YORK CITY still seems totally mad to me.

after flying back from Vegas last week, I was just laid off from Inverse today. I'm open to connecting over email at [email protected] and I'm definitely still in the writing and editing space. Expect a more in-depth explanation coming soon in my Updater newsletter. shannonliao.substack.com

Breaks my heart to share this, but today is my last day at The Verge and I am looking for work! I'd really like to stay in video games, preferably in some kind of journalistic capacity but I can do PR/Marketing and maybe even a lil Narrative Design. Please get in touch! www.ashparrish.com

Great coverage of this. The "top secret" information was...that they wanted to get 32 testers to test *something*. RS's barrister wouldn't even discuss these messages out loud in court, but it seems RS forgot or didn't care to apply to restrict reporters from accessing this evidence.

Essential viewing

Vital reporting here from the PMG team in the wake of the recent interim relief ruling, including evidence that appears to indicate one person was fired for posting a 15-word message in the union Discord channel.

Oof, it's been a mad scramble trying to get this one ready in any kind of good time for the interim relief result being announced. Huge shoutout to Anni for all her work on this from back home and to @wretchedmorgan.bsky.social for being our incredible camera guy up in Edinburgh as well.

We traveled back up to Edinburgh to be there as Rockstar Games and its fired union members took their case to court: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnui...

We'll be publishing our full report from the hearing tomorrow afternoon (UK time), but needless to say, there's an awful lot of additional context to understand about what happened here. This is a really tough outcome for the union's members, especially those who were in the UK on work visas.

The developers of PEAK explain pricing

It’s the most precious of things: actually good games journalism news!

This is perhaps a good time to mention that I attended this preliminary hearing at the start of the week, met some of the fired union members in its aftermath and have been able to review Rockstar's evidence in-person for myself. We'll have more to share once the result has been announced.

I know it’s probably deeply annoying to see Americans go “holy shit, the nakedness of this” after our history of indigenous genocide and global regime change, but what is especially scary about this is that the more recent bullshit alibis at least took some time to drum up and put into place.

As promised, PMG has just donated $5000 to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. We've made the donation to PCRF directly as our fundraiser on YouTube has now completed, but if we add the two figures together that's a total amount of $61,914.62. Thank you so, so much to everyone who participated!

In the first month of our campaign OVER 2,000 people have signed our boycott Xbox pledge! So far that's: 🎮 1,913 gamers 🔨 296 game workers & developers ✏️ 179 game writers 👾 146 streamers Thank you for your support with our launch, we can’t wait to build the campaign bigger and better next year!

$41,000 donated in just two days! We worried that the same energy that got us to $67,000 back in 2023 might not be here this time around, but thank you so much to everybody who's proven us so very wrong here.

This hits so close to home. The professional and personal isolation both @ramiismail.com, @tamoorh.com and many more describes is a brutal, unspoken reality. For many of us, the last two years haven't just been "difficult" but a systematic stripping away of support and community.

There’s a moment in this where @ramiismail.com talks about people distancing themselves or being told to do so because of his advocacy. Most never talk about but, man, it’s so real. The last couple years have been professionally and personally isolating in brutal ways. It’s been really eye-opening.

$30K! We'll be making our donation as soon as our next set of Patreon funding comes through at the start of Jan.

Woah! I think we might hit the target today. Thank you so much if you've donated.

Thanks to everyone who's chipped in so far. This is so heartening to see! As a reminder, if we cross $25,000, PMG is going to donate $5000 at the start of January.

This is tremendous work. Lays the entire thing out as clearly and thoroughly as I've seen. Very patient, empathetic, and addresses questions people might have about the effectiveness of a boycott like this.

The $10,000 donation will be split over a few days due to transfer limits with my card, but rest assured it will all be donated. I will reply to this thread will full receipts when the donation is complete.

Oh my word, this is an enormous gesture from the creator of Luck be a Landlord:

Can somebody help us get over $1,000? www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybj1...

I was allowed to film there, despite what the security guard was shouting at me. In the end, they just watched as I filmed my bits to camera and asked me some questions about why I was there. I told them I was a YouTuber interested in data centres, which is technically true!

Why We're Boycotting Xbox: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybj1...

This is very, very kind! Anni and I have been juggling PMG with raising a very lively almost-two-year-old and it's taken us a while to properly find our feet again, to be honest. Knowing our work has mattered to some folks this year is really appreciated.

I've included this as a reply to yesterday's post about the Rockstar comment, but here's IWGB's full response this morning.

Rockstar now claims it was, in fact, the leaking of “specific game features from upcoming and unannounced titles” that led to the firings. We’re going to have to see the company prove this in an employment tribunal & more than that, it’ll need to prove it for all 31 fired employees in the UK too.

ROCKSTAR UPDATE: Keir Starmer was just asked about the Rockstar firings in Parliament today where he described the situation as "deeply concerning" and promised it would be looked into by government ministers. Not that a Starmer promise is worth much, mind.

NEW: I spoke with the reporters behind Post Games, Aftermath, Game File, People Make Games, Rogue, and Rascal News to learn about the trials and triumphs of going independent in a shifting game media landscape dominated by conglomeration and layoffs.

Currently working on a story about the Xbox boycott and hoping to have it up on the channel before the end of the year. But in the meantime, I'm very happy to have my name (and PMG's) attached to today's pledge from @nogamesforgenocide.com.

I interviewed the creator of Blue Prince days before the game's release about his modest expectations for the indie puzzler. And then I interviewed him again, last week, ahead of The Game Awards, about how a hit game does and doesn't change your life.

🚨NEW DOC ALERT🕹️ The Making of Disco Elysium - Part One: Foundations www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH6m... After over 18 months of research, interviews & editing our Disco Elysium series is here. In this first episode we focus on the cultural and personal foundations of the world of Elysium.

This was such a special video to make, and I really appreciate the Consume Me team being so generous with their time and ARTIFACTS! www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfaM...

You guys 🥹