A popular games-focused YouTube channel is under scrutiny for its working practices, with former contributors claiming they had to crunch for GameXplain and were underpaid for it.
The accusations first emerged through comments by Steve Bowling, Ash Paulsen and Derrick Bitner of Good Vibes Gaming, a new channel the trio formed after leaving GameXplain late last year.
On the January 2 episode of their Today s News Tonight podcast, Bowling recalled having to play through last year s Final Fantasy 7 Remake when Square Enix sent review code just two days before the embargo lifted. I don t think I ve ever suffered more to make a video than I did for this game, said Bowling, adding that his wife encouraged him to leave GameXplain as soon as you can when it was over to which Bowling realised the channel s working practices were not defensible.
The GameXplain Saga Highlights The Quiet Crunch Underneath Games Journalism
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Over the past week or so, a group of former employees have gone public with their experiences working at GameXplain, one of the larger YouTube channels exclusively covering Nintendo content. Their tales are a familiar woe for anyone who has despaired at the state of games writing, blogging or journalism over the last several years, highlighting an industry culture of crunch that’s not far removed from game development itself.