Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: The Escapist

The Escapist Community Learns The Staff Has Been Let Go

Usually, when a company running a website fires their staff or there's a mass exodus, you tend to learn about it quickly. In the case of The Escapist, however, the community found out on the forums. A notice went up today alerting all of the website's members that, shy of a few areas, most of the paid staff have been "relieved of their duties" and they are looking for volunteers to work for free to fill the gap. Below is a snippet from the entire post, which you can read here.

Personally speaking, I have been a part of websites as a community member that went belly up or changed for the worse (TVTome.com is a great example of this.) There are only two ways this goes from here: either the community can extend the life a bit before they too get fed up and demand to be paid for the time spent, or the site will crash and burn once everyone realizes there's little hope if no one is dedicated to driving the bus. Only time will tell which way this one goes.

As many of you may have noticed by now, there hasn't been much staff interaction over the last few months. It is with regret that, to our knowledge, that all paid staff have been relieved of their duties, with the apparent exception of Yahtzee, The Escapist's streaming staff, and Encaen for a few contracted hours a month. We won't beat around the bush, it is a serious situation. We can't promise that The Escapist will last forever; it may have years left in it, or it may disappear tomorrow. What we can say is we will do our upmost to keep this site running in an orderly fashion, for as long as it stays online. That said, nearly everything that it does is through volunteer efforts.

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