Gamurs Websites Just Keep Laying Off Workers

In March, we ran a story about the Gamurs Group, a network of video game websites that includes Dot Esports, Destructoid, Twinfinite, Attack of the Fanboy, WGTC and Siliconera. Specifically, it was a story about how working at the network had become "hell" amid shifting traffic goals and layoffs.

A key aspect of those layoffs was the fact they were often done in small batches, small enough that the network's owner claimed in February this year that they weren't layoffs at all, just an act of letting people go "during the ordinary course of business":

In the months since our story ran I've been contacted by numerous former staffers impacted by the ordinary course of business, and now we can add a bunch more to the list, with GI.biz reporting that "Destructoid's social video lead Brett Medlock and video editor Dan Roemer, PC Invasion writer Alejandro Josan, and Dot Esports staff writer Scott Robertson have all been affected over the past few days."

And those are the ones we know about, the ones who announced their departures on social media. There could be more! As GI.biz's James Batchelor adds, we're looking at an "unknown number of employees", and that "it is unclear how many of the group's sites have been affected".

The Gamurs Group owns 17 websites, most of them video game publications, and many of them with overlapping areas of coverage. Nearly all of them were purchased during a buying spree that ran from 2016-2022, and which had been relatively successful until a combination of investor downturn and SEO changes in late 2022 and 2023 undercut the network's business model, forcing a change in editorial policy in which, according to a former writer, "The only thing that matters is Google and what Google readers want".