It appears Nick Calandra (EiC of The Escapist, which was revived under Enthusiast some years back and sold to Gamurs last year) was fired by Gamurs, which set off a mass departure by Escapist staff, including Yahtzee Croshaw, creator of Zero Punctuation.
Apparently this isn't "just" a layoff, like the last wave of Gamurs firings that came from the collapse of a bunch of VC and crypto nonsense: Nick was fired outright, allegedly for failing to meet some nebulous "goals".
I didn't work with Nick directly during my time in Enthusiast and Gamurs, but out of the many sites in the network I kept an eye on, The Escapist was one of ones doing things right with regards to not just chasing whatever SEO or traffic trends were needed
(god knows we had to do this at Siliconera, but frankly we only looked OK doing it because the site had a naturally wide remit).
this fucking sucks
