Yahtzee and his coworkers and team recently escaped from The Escapist (pun intended) to form a new independent group called Second Wind, too. I’m enjoying the direction that gaming media is going. Corporate media can mercilessly suck all value out of the industry until it withers and dies, and the names and legacies of these places will die with it, but they can’t destroy the talent if the community are still behind them.

Uhh Valnet did what now?

You might be surprised at how well indie publications can do. Look at Second Wind, they have a bunch of writers and video folks all funded AFAIK through Patreon.

SkillUp’s channel has done so well he’s hired on two more people to make videos and just launched their own site with multiple writers. In fact they just hired another columnist, all reader and viewer funded through Patreon (and directly through the site too, I think).

There are other outlets thriving in the indie gaming journalism and review space too, all most if not entirely reader funded. It’s working.

This has not been the case for aftermath.site nor 404media.co, two sites that got started pretty much the same way this new one has.

Edit: I should clarify that I'm saying "those were not doomed from the start, and are both self-sustaining through paid subscribers."

And no ads. I do want them to succeed, but, yeah.