The Escapist appears to be like doomed following mass employees exodus, together with Yahtzee Crowshaw, creator of Zero Punctuation – WGB, Dwelling of AWESOME Evaluations

Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw, the creator of the immensely widespread Zero Punctuation video collection, and quite a few others have resigned from The Escapist gaming web site. These leaving equate to the web site’s complete video workforce.

This all occurred on Monday sixth November and seems to be on account of The Escapist’s house owners, Gamurs Group, choice to fireplace editor-in-chief, Nick Calandra. Calandra had been with The Escapist for a very long time, making his sacking a shock.

Gamurs Group took over The Escapist in 2022, the identical yr by which it additionally acquired the likes of Twinfinite and Prima.

Calandra took to X, previously Twitter, to disclose that he had refused his severance pay and didn’t signal a non-disclosure settlement, letting him discuss precisely what occurred. A useful consumer identified that relying on the place he lives, firms can’t demand an NDA in return for severance pay. Calandra, although, mentioned they might hold their cash – he didn’t need it.

I used to be let go for “not attaining targets” that had been by no means correctly set out for us, and lack of know-how of our viewers and the workforce that constructed that viewers.

I’ve watched many colleagues let go for a similar causes, and at this time was my day!

— Nick Calandra (@nickjcal) November 6, 2023

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Calandra said that he was let go for not attaining targets that had been by no means correctly set out for the workforce. He later defined that the corporate had unrealistic targets and a “lack of know-how of the technique and mannequin we constructed that was working as supposed. Simply not “quick sufficient” for a corp.”

Following the information, Yahtzee additionally took to X and introduced that he had formally resigned from The Escapist. Yahtzee has been producing the immensely widespread Zero Punctuation collection for The Escapist since 2008. His fast speech, harsh criticisms and approach with phrases have made him immensely widespread, with a lot of his video critiques getting over one million critiques. He was simply the preferred facet of The Escapist, with many individuals saying that he was the only real purpose they ever visited the positioning. Nevertheless, The Escapist did produce lots of different worthwhile content material as properly.

Escapist employees members  Darren Mooney, Sebastian Ruiz, Jesse Galena, Matt Laughlin, Will Cruz, and Amy Campbell all introduced their resignation, too, gutting The Escapists video workforce within the course of.

Yahtzee confirmed that he doesn’t personal the rights to his Zero Punctuation collection, that means they might technically proceed with another person on the helm. That might be a frankly silly transfer, although. Yahtzee additionally mentioned that we’d be listening to his voice once more.

Which brings us again to Nick Calandra. He posted on The Escapist’s Discord server, saying: “Tomorrow you’ll know extra about what our plans are for the longer term, together with a livestream on Wednesday at 11am CT. Our plan is to go unbiased, however we’ll share extra plans on that later this week.”

I’m deeply excited to see what the workforce are planning. As for The Escapist, it appears Gamurs Group has shot itself within the foot, reloaded, shot itself within the different foot and the stumbled straight off a cliff. The lack of Yahtzee alone would have been nothing in need of a catastrophe, however firing Nick and the remainder of the video workforce strolling out implies that, in my eyes, The Escapist is completed. It might stay as a former shell of what it as soon as was, however that’ll be it.

I want Nick Calandra, Yahtzee, Darren Mooney, Sebastian Ruiz, Jesse Galena, Matt Laughlin, Will Cruz, and Amy Campbell the most effective of luck of their subsequent challenge which I’m positive will kick ass.