Waypoint shutting down amid layoffs at Vice

@akira333: ...Historically, and removing all moral questions from the equation, slave labor was is pretty notoriously awful and inefficient because the slaves DON'T want to participate in the system. So they would often work slow, and intentionally break tools.

Also it is pretty disingenuous to compare treating human beings as cattle, and ....getting payed to do a job that subsequently makes money for the person paying you.

@akira333 That's a very dishonest argument. I can't believe I'm even going to respond to something so ridiculous. Slaves by definition have no agency or ability to not participate or end the system. if you hate capitalism and corporatism you can work for the government, non profits, or public education. There are options that are not tied to the capitalist system. Again you all are reading more into this. I was making a smart assed quip based on the Waypoint mantra. You all are going way deeper on this than I was.:

@efesell: ...Do YOU have the site numbers?

Contrary to popular belief, most businesses don't just get rid of products that make them money. And considering how many places are getting shut down lately, it's probably fair to assume that the money just isn't there in this industry the way it used to be.

Yeah, this has got me thinking. There's probably a generation of people who have grown up without the likes of Gamespot, IGN, etc on their radar.

I'm pretty sure you people going on about the "fuck capitalism" statement are taking it too seriously. It's clear that the statement is an emotional reaction to the cutthroat reality that capitalism can be, like the massive layoffs. Too big to fail corporations getting bailed out instead of punished when they lead the economy towards a recession because of there corruption and other examples. Of course, at the end of the day, people need to make money to put food on the table and pay the rent. And they know capitalism in America isn't going to end anytime soon. They are just letting out their frustration and rightfully so. Let them. It's not that big of a deal.

@theodoricfriede: No, I don't have the numbers for your claim. I asked because it's your claim.

Honestly that's the generous angle because I would say a lot of that generation would actively treat them like they're basically just Memes.

@efesell: My claim is based around 1: a known issue of ad rates for websites going WAY down, and 2: the aforementioned reasoning that you don't cut down a tree that bares fruit.

@rlatham: have you never heard of the Haitan revolution, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas? To say they had no agency is just wrong and your definition of slavery as well

@akira333: ...Homie not only did you just argue against yourself, but you just implied that slaves choose to be slaves.

@theodoricfriede said:

I'm genuinely confused by someone being this naive. I don't know should I be happy for them or just worried. Mostly just amazed that someone has completely missed stories after stories of corporations fumbling balls.

I don't also know why we would assume that Waypoint was doing bad given that they always crashed through their fundraising goals and by all accounts Waypoint+ was a runaway success on a level that the parent company had not expected. At some point you've got to use Occam's razor, even if you harbor antipathy towards the subject.

This thread is starting to really suck and it’s only the second page.

@theodoricfriede: not at all nor do I understand how you can interpret it that way. The earlier point was that just because people participate in a system doesn't mean they are not simultaneously trying to end the system as you pointed out earlier about slaves breaking tools. The second point was because one participates in system doesn't make their criticism or desire to see the system end illogical or invalid. I didn't imply slaves chose to be slaves. I implied that slaves resisted their condition and fought back.

This derail sucks and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

@theodoricfriede: not at all nor do I understand how you can interpret it that way. The earlier point was that just because people participate in a system doesn't mean they are not simultaneously trying to end the system as you pointed out earlier about slaves breaking tools. The second point was because one participates in system doesn't make their criticism or desire to see the system end illogical or invalid. I didn't imply slaves chose to be slaves. I implied that slaves resisted their condition and fought back.

@retris: At a guess, they made more money than expected, but still not enough to fully cover costs. It's pretty simple.

The whole point is that Waypoint wasn't losing money thanks to Waypoint+. The money was in fact there. They were steadily profitable and were one of the few parts of Vice that actually did well (Patrick talked about this on their stream today). Vice itself got destroyed by a series of incredibly poor business decisions by senior management (including their rather infamous former CEO, who made many millions of dollars then ran away when things started going south) who all bailed when the consequences for their bad choices started showing up and left all of the people working there to suffer instead.

Patrick and Rob were told earlier yesterday that Waypoint weren't part of the layoffs, but then suddenly found out they were getting laid off. From what it sounds like, Vice management is just willy-nilly cutting as many staff as possible in a desperate attempt to cut staffing costs and make the company more appealing to prospective buyers. There's no logic to this other than someone aggressively trying to get a number to be lower. They're cutting a huge part of their main Vice News team, which is the main draw of Vice, as well.

You're talking about a company with a track record of making incredibly poor business decisions. They went from being a company that was receiving multi-billion dollar purchase offers to now trying to sell themselves for a tiny fraction of what they could have sold for but didn't because they wanted even more money. Cutting a profitable arm of the company to make their staffing costs look cheaper to prospective buyers is entirely something they would do. They seem that desperate.

@ben_h: Very well, but even if all that were the case (and to be frank I have doubts because everyone thinks they are the most vital part of any company they work for), it still remains that, if poor business decisions lead to Vice being unable to maintain having Waypoint on their roster, my aforementioned point stands that the money isn't there.

Don't let the twerpy little troll that only ever chimes in to try and stir up shit distract from the topic. This is all they do.

Come on dude. Use a little critical thinking.

@retris said:

America leads the world in creation of billionaires, which some people take to be a "winning proposition" because a) they've projected their egos onto the "high-score" mentality that the bigger number=better country or b) they're GENUINELY still buying into the lies of "trickle-down economics" or the fact that they themselves are only temporarily being kept out of the club, and obviously someone of their skills and intelligence will work hard and get there. This is also why they tend to pretend engagement with arguments and then just throw up a shield of jaded disaffection when it's clear they have nothing to say. "It's just a videogame forum, why you getting so mad, bruh?" etc.

They put zero stock into social safety nets, and can only think of words like "socialism" and "universal healthcare/basic income" as boogeyman phrases without actually understanding what they do and mean. You can see how anytime socialism is brought up, the kneejerk counter is "VENEZUELA!" and never France, Germany, Switzerland, England, Canada, anyplace where that form of government has worked for decades, and in the case of Canada actually has an insulating effect from economic crashes.

While I do think that "Fuck capitalism" is largely a rallying cry for like-minded individuals: of course it's not actually a call to action and is just venting, I just find it tremendously ironic that the people who do mental gymnastics to justify someone else's wealth take it seriously riiiiiiiiiiiiight up to themselves not having any actual point to make.

@curseofthewise: "No actual point to make." A lack of points such as "Dude, there's no money to pay these workers." and "This is happening across the industry based on new media consuming trends"

Indeed. It must just be those naive capitalists pushing antiquated ideas such as math.

To add to this, shrinking the business probably makes it a cheaper proposition.

At the risk of further increasing the mods' anger meter from this derailment about "fucking capitalism"...

@theodoricfriede: No BS question: Do you know what a "stock buyback" is? And how private equity firms get accused of practicing "vulture capitalism"?

In this post-Reagan deregulation, post-2008 recession (Is "The Big Short" [2015] movie a good pop explainer of how that played out?) world, I don't see how a person can look at these flailing, gambling c-suite executives and still think that the only reason why people get fired or divisions shut down is simply that they weren't a sustainable business.

FCGH is cheeky cry of frustration that has endured in the Waypoint Radio podcast around the time of a new year clocking in and the website seeing Danielle Riendeau depart and later land at Fanbyte (rip). But, and I can only speak for myself on this, the frustration it points at is how "late capitalism" has gone away from providing a competitive market for goods and services (never thought of art criticism as a service, but yeah it is a service to society) and in to a twisted realm of gambling and big dick dueling where it isn't enough to make some money, but all the money.

@eribuster: I am well aware of what a stock buyback is, yes.

I am not claiming that vice is running like a well oiled machine, but I am saying that if an aspect of a company is providing you a notable amount of profit, even the most poorly run company would be hard pressed to get rid of it.

If the bean counters at Vice look at the numbers and say "it's just not making enough", then Vice is under no obligation to keep pursuing that market. It's a common-sense, smart financial decision.

Patrick tweet confirming: Waypoint was in the black, but it didn't matter -- it got the axe in the name of infinite growth.

https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/1652841557521735680

Truly, FCGH.

EDIT: As is noted below, there's some poor punctuation on Patrick's part -- that first comma should be a period: "Waypoint was profitable."

I'm pretty sure the $45bn debts might've had more to do with it.

@shindig: I don't think you read that tweet correctly. The $45bn in debt was for Disney, which doesn't own Vice. In any case, Vice is a floundering shitshow, and no one is disputing that fact as being the reason for Waypoint's untimely death. It's just really annoying to see people online lay this textbook failure by the capitalist class on the workers (i.e. Waypoint staff) that have done incredible work in building a sustainable subscription business.

@peezmachine Well his tweet said "Waypoint was profitable, for a time, the company bragged about having a subscription business with steady income." The "for a time" portion seems to indicate that it was profitable but is no longer. Otherwise he would have just said "Waypoint is profitable". Since he's a writer and chooses his words carefully I'm pretty sure it means that it's not in the black currently. If that's the case then it adds some context to Vice shutting it down. If that's not the case then Patrick should clarify that statement.:

@rlatham: awful convenient to quote the first line of his tweet and not the second line where he says they were specifically upset at the lack of growth, not them being in the red. As pointed out elsewhere by Patrick Waypoint was in the black right up until the time of it's death, to the point when the layoffs initially hit they were told they were safe and later found out they weren't. In the most recent Powerwash Simulator stream on Twitch he reiterates that the cut was a last second addition, and they were likely given the extra month (Waypoint dies June 2nd) because "certain people in power" felt bad about the situation between telling them they were safe and Waypoint being a uniquely bad example of just how bad the mismanagement of Vice was. Stop with the assumptions, unless someone at Vice comes out with a spreadsheet showing Patrick is lying out his ass it is still plenty safe to say that Waypoint was profitable in some way.

Vice failed. Waypoint did not.

@dareitus: CHUDs are very adamant that "no one listens/reads Waypoint", and will not be satisfied until an audited financial statement is presented. Even then, it will be fake news. You can't win with these people.

@dareitus I'm not disagreeing that it's a crappy situation, I was just pointing out that if it in fact was not currently profitable it adds context. Also I quoted that portion of the tweet because if was the beginning of his statement and specifically calls out their situation. The fact that they were told one thing and then Vice did the opposite is beyond shitty.

@navster15: I wasn't making that argument at all. Clearly they had a large and loyal audience. I think fewer voices in general is worse than more voices. It would be nice if they can spin off into their own thing if those subs move over to a crowd funded platform with much lower overhead they should do well. Just because they weren't my cup of tea doesn't mean I wish them ill or that they shouldn't exist. I would argue that even if they were "in the red" if Vice overall was doing well that the service they provide from a journalistic standpoint should be enough to keep them going. I think this is more about Vice looking to sell and cutting it to the bone. It sucks.

Not sure why having a conversation and pointing things out makes people attack. I don't have some sort of sinister agenda, I'm not dancing on anyone's grave. Again, I made a smart assed, quippy comment at the beginning. I should realize that context and intent is hard to decipher on the internet. All I can say is that I don't come in bad faith. Clearly that is lost.

On top of the statements specifically about whether Waypoint is covering their operating costs/growing in audience/growing in revenue, it’s possible that completely independent from Waypoint’s performance, if Vice is looking to sell and the potential buyers think the video game news/reviews sector is a waste of time/money right now, if Vice’s people are desperate enough they might just axe Waypoint (and whatever other components of Vice that aren’t absolute profit rock stars) for the sake of smoothing over the deal.

Maybe they wouldn’t if the brand had some real power behind it, but Waypoint is relatively niche and new. If you ask random people on the street, most of them are probably much more familiar with Vice’s other work than with Waypoint specifically (though maybe that’s a bad metric, as I feel every man-on-the-street hasn’t heard of any video game news source).

My point is there are big enough moves happening at Vice that there could be other big picture reasons that Waypoint is getting shut down that were largely out of Waypoint staff’s hands. Or maybe not, and the specifics of their earnings were very much under the microscope! We don’t know.

@rlatham: But that's not pointing anything out. "just pointing out that if it in fact was not currently profitable it adds context" only makes sense if it wasn't profitable. You misinterpreted the first line to mean it became unprofitable. The "for a time" refers to the happiness of his superiors, as illustrated by the second line. Which is why I brought up the additional streams and context, even if the tweet can be read multiple ways (it's ambiguous I'll give you that) Patrick has said in the Powerwash stream that Waypoint has been in the black since Waypoint+ launched. Period. The context you are trying to add doesn't exist it's as constructive as saying "Well if Patrick was being paid $40mil a year that's a good reason to lay him off." Cuz like, sure yeah, if that were true, but we aren't talking about that.

The reading that most people interpreted and the one that makes more sense is that he meant to put a period after the first fragment but made a typo. With the full quote, it's saying the opposite of what you are saying. Here's how I, and seemingly everyone else, read his tweet:

Waypoint was profitable. For a time, the company bragged about having a subscription business with steady income. The company stopped bragging when we did too well right out of the gate, and they didn’t like the lack of growth. Being profitable wasn’t enough.

If you remove the context of the entire rest of the tweet, yeah it sounds like he's saying Waypoint is no longer profitable. With the context of the rest of the tweet, it's clear the tweet is about how Waypoint was profitable but didn't meet the growth goals set by upper management who likely lacked the context that Waypoint's numbers were already strong and thus had a weaker growth potential. Every business has a ceiling for growth and most reasonable people understand this. Diminishing returns kicks in eventually.

As it turns out, context is important.

@ben_h: Yes, that is how I read it as well. Actually, since I'm on the take from Big Em-Dash I probably would have gone with that instead of the period.

@peezmachine: Fair enough. I guess I put too much emphasis on the "was" since technically it's still an entity until June, but I get where you're coming from. Either way it sucks all around for those involved and I hope they find something quick. I always hope when people are laid off with some sort of severance that they find something quick and can take it as a bonus, one last FU to the previous employer.

https://twitter.com/BenMullin/status/1653172643044917249

I've really started to appreciate that I had a chance to grow up with, what subjectively to me seems like, the golden age of games media. While I was too young for the early years of Nintendo Power, I had a chance to experience years of games magazines before there was any sort of coverage on the internet or TV. Then, years of GameSpot live streams, video reviews, podcasts and E3 reports. G4, 1UP Show, IGN, GameTrailers, Giant Bomb and finally the dawn of streamer culture.

And yes, it's easy to look fondly back at the golden years at my age and shake a fist at how the new kids are doing it. It's not all bad now. There's a much wider array of opinions, backgrounds and personalities represented among the streamers out there. Everyone can find someone who caters for their specific needs and preferences. Information is much easier to access and overall, the average consumer is probably better informed.

Then again, these focused streamers serving specific wants and needs doesn't seem to progress the discourse around games. It's why I haven't really followed Jeff after his departure from Giant Bomb. I'd rather hear what a few people have to say about a game or a story, rather than a single person having a predictable monologue of their opinions on a subject. Luckily the likes of Nextlander, Fire Escape, and until now Waypoint, have catered to this need.

@isomeri: As someone who is old enough to have grown up with Nintendo Power...Nintendo Power sucked! It was always a company rag which meant it hyped and overinflated almost everything with breathless preview coverage and unreliable reviews. Even as a kid I absolutely did not trust it. The one thing it did have that were useful were game guides, but the Internet is so much better for that. I will say their layouts and graphics were good and I do miss some of the presentation elements like nicely drawn maps etc... but you were essentially subscribing to advertising, and not straightforward ads but manipulative previews and reviews meant to sell games.

Other magazines had their own problems, often coming down to lack of space and long lead times (magazines had to get stuff to the printer months in advance so they were often reviewing incomplete code).

For me the golden age was from the early websites through probably the mid 2010s, when you would get lots of long detailed good reviews and other coverage from a variety of sources and a lot of perspectives. Streamers just don't do the kind of coverage I want, which is someone's thoughts and reactions to a game not just watching them play. And most burn out quickly meaning they don't have the perspective of a Gerstmann or a Shoemaker. They are also strongly incentivized to hype the games they play and to jump on the new flavor of the week.

Man do I miss early Giant Bomb. Basically until Ryan died. It combined the best of personalized media with professionalism and people who had the depth of knowledge and experience to both inform and entertain. I miss GB's written reviews, I miss those early quick looks with their chaotic energy, I miss when GOTY was a set of extremely stupid videos instead of a massive series of spoiler laden podcasts. It's funny because I still love games, including new games and fresh genres, but increasingly I feel like games coverage has passed me by. Waypoint dying is just another sign of the times.

@bigsocrates: I agree 100 percent with everything you said.

The growing body of evidence is starting to show Vice was just a complete mess of a company. Especially with more reports coming out that Vice Media will likely file for bankruptcy in the coming days.

@zombiepie: But ZombiePie, don't you know that every company is always led completely rationally and with the best interests of every employee in mind? Why would they mess up Vice if they could just make money? Have you been reading this thread at all?

What happens to Waypoint’s content after it shuts down? I could maybe see web articles sticking around as long as Vice does (which might not be long actually), but who gets ownership of its Twitch archives? Does all that stuff just disappear into the aether? Forgive me if they’ve addressed this on a podcast or something recently.

It increasingly feels like the disappearance of content is the theme of the 21st century, as was discussed in that “state of gaming in 2023” thread a couple months back.

@allthedinos: I believe that if left inactive Twitch will start to purge videos after like a month or so.

Anything that made it to YouTube should be fine though.

Their Discord community is already actively working on archiving their content, including all videos and podcasts, so it can continue to be publicly available should Vice shutdown or pull down Waypoint's channels. Patrick mentioned that they aren't sure what will happen with the current podcast feed since that has to be paid for but the Youtube content is likely to be fine since Vice has much bigger things to worry about than taking down a soon-to-be dormant Youtube channel that costs them nothing to leave alone.

As for Twitch VODs, it's hard to say. Cado usually creates highlights for entire streams as part of their pipeline to get content to Youtube, and creating highlights makes it so Twitch keeps the stream available much longer than usual (For example, pretty much every stream they've done in the last 4-5 years is still available under Highlights on their Videos page), but a Twitch staff member who was in their chat said that it's not guaranteed that the VODs will be available permanently.

The Waypoint folks are also going to be looking into making all of their Waypoint+ content freely available. They've already started uploading things to the main podcast feed and they mentioned potentially just making the Waypoint+ feed public so everyone can access it (either that or uploading old Waypoint+ content to the main podcast feed).