Video game journalism is in a difficult position in 2026 — and there is no easy solution to the industry’s struggles.
With waves of layoffs, shrinking freelance budgets and changing audience media consumption habits challenging traditional business models in the space, it would be an understatement to say that the past year has been difficult for the business of games journalism. At GamesBeat’s Hollywood & Games event in December, GamesBeat lead news writer Alexander Lee (that’s me) sat down with Christopher Dring and Kaare Eriksen for an honest conversation about the struggles of games media and the industry’s trajectory going into the new year.
Dring and Eriksen are uniquely positioned to share insights about the current state of games journalism. After serving as the head of GamesIndustry.biz for over eight years, Dring founded the Game Business newsletter, where currently serves as editor-in-chief, in March 2025. For the past year, Dring’s newsletter has been one of the rare bright spots in gaming journalism, celebrating its twenty-thousandth subscriber earlier this month. As a media analyst at Luminate Intelligence and longtime journalist and writer in his own right, Eriksen has a birds’-eye view into gaming journalists’ ongoing challenges — and the industry’s potential paths forward from this moment.
Since the December conversation, the situation has grown even more dire. Amid a broader wave of media industry layoffs that included cuts at publications from the Washington Post to CBS News, organizations like The Verge, Inverse and The Escapist have entirely laid off or significantly reduced their gaming editorial staff in 2026.
There isn’t a silver bullet for gaming media’s ills, but both Dring and Eriksen suggested potential solutions for gaming journalists and publications looking to stay afloat in the coming year, from Dring’s support for hybrid revenue models to Eriksen’s belief in the importance of supportive ownership structures that can allow publications to weather traffic and AI headwinds.
“It is important to try and distribute your ‘content’ — I put that in air quotes — in as many ways as you possibly can,” Dring said during the 28-minute chat. “Because otherwise, someone else will do it.”
To listen to the show, click on the Spotify player above — or you can click here to watch the full video. Stay tuned for more BIG Show content, including more episodes to be filmed at Game Developers Conference 2026, as well as a full season rollout later this year.