Most quit from GO Media trying to force writers to move from Chicago to LA without a pay adjustment.
I know. I was going for a joke, but eh. They can't all be winners!
I still overall like them, but my god the ads on mobile have gotten so bad. The only other thing i'm mad about them is recently a lot of posts have been putting spoiler content in them either not saying spoilers coming or putting them straight up in the article title and pic
AV Club is part of The Onion Inc Union, alongside Deadspin. They are not on strike, as their contract is separate and has not expired. They did post a message of solidarity, however.
Sites like kotaku.com.au are all under different ownership and license the brands from G/O Media.
The people who bought the Gizmodo Media sites have operated in the past with a clear plan: Cut salaries, load the sites up with as many advertisements as possible, replace the staff that is quickly bleeding out with cheap freelancers, and then once traffic has cratered enough you strip the organization of any sellable assets and have a fire sale. They're basically the new version of the classic 1980s corporate raider, wholly uninterested in running a business long term and only determined to siphon off as much money out of the enterprise as possible before leaving it on the side of the road as a husk, oftentimes loaded up with as much debt they can transfer to the company as possible.
Late stage capitalism has evolved to this. They found a cheat code to short term profits. It shouldn't be legal, and offloading liabilities knowing that the receiving organization cannot service the debt should be criminal.
