The Washington Post had a string of employment terminations over the past week, with 20 newsroom reporters being laid off and 30 vacancies announced to be unfilled. According to GamesIndustry.biz, majority of these cuts are due to the Washington Post’s decision to shut down Launcher, its dedicated section for gaming news and culture.
Launcher was established on October 15, 2019 and provided “feature coverage and analysis of the people, companies, teams and trends” that made up the ever-growing gaming industry. According a memo by the Post’s executive editor Sally Buzbee, the positions were eliminated in response that were “not essential to serving our competitive needs.” However, the Washington Post Guild, the representative voice of the Post’s employees, made a Tweet expressing that these layoffs were not rooted in financial necessity. The now former editor of Launcher Alyse Stanley also commented that these layoffs came as a complete surprise to the staff.
The Washington Post’s decision to end its dedicated gaming section is only the latest in a wave of games media layoffs. Popular gaming websites GameSpot and Giant Bomb also saw recent wave of layoffs, and there will likely be more employment cutbacks within the year from a variety of media outlets due to worsening general financial conditions.