Freelance Video Game Journalists Are Propping Up The Industry, And Many Are Being Paid

You don’t need me to summarise the state of video games media in 2024: Things are bad. But they’ve become bad in a myriad of ways, and one of the more depressing is that as the biggest sites have slashed budgets and laid off permanent staff writers, leaning instead on underpaid, overworked freelancers.

From IGN to GameSpot to Kotaku, from reviews to reporting to service posts to SEO-friendly fare, over the last few years nearly every video game outlet still in existence has increasingly moved away from paying full-time writers (and their associated costs, like health care) towards paying a few hundred bucks for hungry freelancers to file a bunch of content instead. This is especially the case when it comes to stories like previews, reviews, guides and tips, which might not need the kind of context or follow-up work reporting or opinion pieces require. 

Many of these assignments are paying $150-300. This might sound fair, but consider that a guide or extensive tips post can take dozens of hours of gameplay to test and pull together, followed by the time and work required to actually get the words on the website. Which is why even the games sites paying “well” these days aren’t exactly paying well.

I spoke to freelance games writers to find out what they’re being paid and how much is expected of them. The results are, with some exceptions, pretty grim. Below you’ll find a big rundown of what various freelancers tell us they’ve been paid by various sites; we’ve reached out to each site or network to confirm them, and will note this if they get back to us.

(Please note that while some are a set, concrete rate, others can be more flexible based on factors like experience or word count, which is why they’re presented as more of a ballpark.)

First up are the ones I’d describe as being “actually pretty OK”. Rolling Stone reportedly pay $500 for a non-reported games or entertainment feature, with reporting pushing that higher. The New York Times runs gaming stories and pays $1 per word, which makes it comfortably the best-paying outlet in this roundup. The Epic Games Store pays between $350 and $1000 depending on wordcount. (Before you ask why we’re listing a games store here, Epic pays freelance writers to provide copy for the platform, ranging from small blogs to big interview features.)

At generalist tech outlets that also dabble in video games, The Verge reportedly pays $500 for a non-reported feature (reporting can push that higher), while writers tell us Wired is quoting them between $500-750 for a freelance piece, depending on the workload and wordcount. When it comes to dedicated video game outlets like Polygon, most pieces pay between $250-500 depending on length/workload; some freelancers told me they’ve gotten $250 for a basic feature on a TV show, with bigger reviews coming closer to $500. At IGN, given the site’s size, rates are all over the place depending on the style of work and the scope of it, but in a rare and welcome piece of transparency everything is fully disclosed on this page. Generally, freelancers can expect anything from $30 (for a 20-minute news item) to $1000 and over for larger features.

Now let’s look at another group of sites, where prices start dropping a little lower. Writers tell us GameSpot pays $200 for most articles (including listicles) and $300 for reviews. Unlike most outlets, we’re told that it doesn’t matter if it’s 1500 words or 4000 words; those are a flat rate. Freelancers who have filed for Kotaku recently say they’re paid $300 for most pieces, ranging from service posts to freelance contributions like interviews [Update: On the day we published this story, Kotaku’s ownership changed most freelance payouts to $150 per post, with a guideline of around 400 words].

On the business front, Game Developer tell us they pay $250-300 for an 800-word story, and $350 for a larger 1600-word piece, which usually require multiple sources. Gamesindustry.biz pays between £200 (USD$260) and £250 (USD$325) per piece, depending on wordcount and workload.

At Eurogamer, some freelancers are paid £175 (USD$225) for an occasional shorter piece, but the site tells us most pieces commissioned are longer ones that pay £350 (USD$455). PCGamesN tell us a quick news post pays £25 (USD$32) while a 2000-word feature will pay £200 (USD$260). Prestigious magazine Edge is apparently paying freelance writers £140 (USD$180) for a review of approximately 1000 words. Meanwhile at Games Radar freelancers tell us they’ve been paid £140 (USD$180) for a feature or review [Update: those were on the small side, other writers say Games Radar’s rates actually slide up to $300 for a bigger feature or review].

You might have noticed the sites in that last paragraph pay less than the mostly-American outlets we’d already covered. They’re all British, where writers (across all media, not just games) are usually paid pretty poorly across the board, whether they’re freelance or not.

Most sites above are major publications that still have a number of permanent writers on staff, or are generalist outlets with limited opportunities for games stories. Given that, the number of freelance writers they can hire at a time is relatively tiny compared to the pool of available talent.

There are, however, entire networks out there that are powered in large part by freelancers, and which across their many sites seem to always have plenty of work, whether it be news, reviews or SEO-baiting content like specific tips and guides. The catch: they pay absolute dogshit, and whaddya know, our old friends at Gamurs feature heavily.

Freelancers who have written for Pro Game Guides, a Gamurs site dedicated almost entirely to service posts, say they’re paid on the basis of what are called “tiers”. The lowest of these, described as everything from “Can you save in [Game]?” to “All Trophies and Achievements in [Game]”, pays its writers…$11 per article. The second tier, which includes “Full guide rewrites” and “Lore explainers”, pays $21 per post [Update: We’re told PGG updated some of their rates only last week, with posts 550 words and now longer now paying $0.04 per word].

And so it goes through the tiers, with a “complete walkthrough” of a video game, something that would take hours upon hours to play and then involve writing 7000 words, paying just $150. If it’s 10,000 words or more you get $250. Meanwhile we’re told Destructoid’s rates are $16 for a short news article, ranging through to just $65 for larger features. Gamepur reportedly pays its freelancers $16 per news piece and $26 per guide (though that rate comes with an absurd required quota of 25 articles in a month).

At Valnet, a network of similar scale to Gamurs, things are just as bad. Features writers for Game Rant tell us they’re paid $19 for 1000 words, while writers tell us “flash news” posts pay $5 for 250 words or $10 for 500. A “long guide” of over 1200 words pays $25, while an interview of 1500-2500 words also pays just $25. Hardcore Gamer, another Valnet site, reportedly pays similarly: $10 for news post (around 400 words), $20 for guides (500-1500 words), $30 for longer guides (1500+ words) and $30 for reviews, previews and interviews.

(We contacted both Gamurs and Valnet for confirmation of these rates, but at time of publishing have yet to hear back from them).

As someone now running a video games media website, I know as well as anyone that times are tough! Between payroll and an ever-dwindling ad market it’s hard finding the budget for stuff like freelance. You can see this reflected in many of these rates; at many sites, even the biggest ones, they’re actually paying less than they would have ten years ago. In cases like Gamurs’ and Valnet’s news rates, they’re roughly what I was being paid at Kotaku in…2006.

For anyone who has never done this kind of work–and I’m assuming that’s most of you!–in the majority of cases here once you add up all the time spent playing a game, taking notes, researching a story, interviewing and then transcribing an interview, drafting a story, polishing it and then submitting it for publication, many freelancers are being paid less than the minimum wage.

Nobody here is wilfully setting out to cause misery or to insult the skills and labour of their workers. And yet, intention or not, that’s exactly what’s happening in many of these cases. By pivoting so hard towards service posts, and then outsourcing so much of that work to freelancers, video games media has created an ever-growing aspect of the industry that in many cases is little more than sweatshop labour.

And we are all poorer for it! Freelance writers aren’t afforded the security and continuity that comes with a staff position, and opportunities in the field are now so few and far between (and usually pay so poorly) that it’s almost impossible for freelancers to make a living, even if they’re doing enough work to justify one.

The sites employing them, meanwhile, are increasingly without an identity or consistency of their own. By bringing in a constantly rotating cast of outsiders, it’s almost impossible for them to provide the kind of authoritative voice you grow to expect (and sometimes love) from staff writers.

And readers, finally, are often getting what’s been paid for. While every freelancer is busting their ass to file their copy, and many are doing excellent work, the fact is that when you’re paying so many people so little, and in many cases forcing them to rush their work in order to try to make the transaction even remotely worth it for them, that work isn’t always going to be of the highest standard.

It’s a lose-lose-lose situation that is no one person or outlet’s fault, and yet like so many other structural issues plaguing games media in 2024, here we are. Layoffs and site closures are often the most obvious examples of the impending disintegration of the online media ecosystem, but the shift away from hiring large teams of in-house writers and employing an army of freelancers in their stead hasn’t been great either.