Hi folks - for anyone who is concerned about the future of this forum, please know that the mods already had a plan in place in case we ever needed to migrate to community hosting. It’s likely that the domain, name and branding will need to change, but we will be able to transfer all of the user accounts and post history over to a new host. We’ll have more information to share in the coming days or weeks including the timeframe for this migration.
This community is extremely important to us and we are not going anywhere.
I genuinely do not know what kind of person I would be today without Waypoint. It came about when I was in college, very uncertain and unsure about my politics and how the things I cared about fit into the world, and it really carried me through the next few years of my life. So many of my best memories of the last half-decade of my life involve being somewhere and doing something and listening to Waypoint Radio as I did it. It was a lodestar for me in inexpressible ways.
Also eternally grateful to them for bringing this community together. I can’t imagine the last few years without these forums as a community space. Love y’all dearly, and everyone who has put time and effort into making this the last good place on the internet.
[BioStats]
Let us know when the Rob-Patrick & former Waypoint Crew subscription site goes up so we can spend our money.
This! I woke up a bit ago to this news and its like a gut punch . After the gb layoffs I’d seen vice looking for a buyer floating around in the rumors and it made me worry , not that worry has happened and I hate it. My waypoint plus sub was ready to renew on june 12th so while normaly I’m against the idea that we need more patreons and the like this is one of those times I can full heartedly say that I’m 100% willing to say I’d love if this set of ppl were able to stay together and would fully plan to keep supporting them in the future , I after all do now have that sub money open and had already planned for them to get it another yr anyway. That said I also sadly understand if ppl are worried about their family’s and healthcare when that route isn’t nessessarily stable you have to do what you have to do. Still everyone invovled in waypoint past and present has been great and I’m happy they’ve been a weird part oof my life for the past half decade or so.
I’m so sad to hear this news. I discovered the podcast four years ago and it has been a treat, engaging me with video games and other pop culture, and the personal stories were a lot of fun. I hope everyone lands safely. You all are very special.
Goddammit. I know you 4 will land on your feet and wherever you end up, I’ll double my Waypoint+ sub for you all. I can’t wait to see what you all do next.
I’m really glad to hear there are plans to keep this forum going! I find the pace of Discord to be difficult but I love reading & occasionally participating in the conversations that happen in this community, so I’ve loved regularly checking in on this forum.
This really sucks. I know the crew has regularly said Waypoint is an anomaly that shouldn’t exist but the reality of The Fucking Market or whatever catching up with them hurts. Waypoint is the only outlet I trust (not ready to use past tense yet!!!) to reliably tell me about good shit in games that is often talked over in other spaces. This feels like a huge blow to the corner of game culture that isn’t horrible. I wish the best for everyone involved and am hoping they can go out with a bang.
I hope everyone makes it out okay and if they can pull off what just about everyone else at GB has done by going to Patreon I’ll be first in line. I gotta have someone to send dumb questions to!
Also shout out to the mods, if y’all need funding for the community let me know.
Really sad news. Without exaggeration Waypoint quickly became my favorite podcast when it debuted, and has been for the years since. Without exception, the best games writing and podcasting happening right now. This is so frustrating and I hope the best for all of the folks that make Waypoint so special.
I also hope they grab the big bag of Waypoint+ money, run for the hills and, I don’t know, throw a wild donut party. Or start some kind of viable listener-supported project.
I wish the best for everyone affected by the layoffs! I hope they can all land on their feet.
I know that a lot of what was started with Waypoint (e.g. this excellent community) will live on in all sorts of ways, but it’s hard not to feel like this is the end of an era. Waypoint came up around the same time as a lot of other criticism first game sites. It outlived most of them too. Now we’re left in a world where there doesn’t seem to be a lot of places that can support the kind of criticism we all loved.
Fucking hell. I’ve been a fan of Waypoint since the very start. When it started I was a liberal guy who unironically listened to Pod Save America, seven years later and I’m a socialist and a woman (I was back then too I just didn’t know it yet). While not the only reason, listening to Waypoint Radio twice a week was absolutely a part of that journey.
One of the most frustrating parts of this stage of capitalism is just how hard it is to make a living creating stuff or providing a simple service. It feels like everyone I know who has a straightforward job is struggling. Not just people in the arts and journalism but in medicine and manufacturing. The only people who are doing fine are management consultants and data scientist who have difficulty describing what they do in a single sentence. What is the point of this system if basic commerce isn’t a good way to make money?
I’m devastated for everyone whose future has suddenly become uncertain, and bitterly angry at hypercapitalist vampires ruining everything good by constantly demanding infinite hockey stick growth. The fuckers don’t even know or care what or who they ruin.
Selfishly, I’m hoping that the voices of Waypoint stay in this industry so that I can follow them wherever they choose to go. But I also fully understand if they choose to find something less precarious. I wish the best of luck to everyone affected by the layoffs!
And I am so happy and relieved to hear that this forum is going to live on somewhere! While I’m not the most active poster, this is a smart, thoughtful and fundamentally kind community that I would sorely miss if it became collateral damage. All the love to the mods who smartly prepared for this eventuality
At every round of layoffs in gaming journalism I would always brace for this announcement and it sadly arrived in the end. And now I’m am, as everyone else here, gutted.
The Waypoint pod has been a companion for the past few years in good and (especially) in bad days and now it really feels like I’m losing a friend. I’m desperately hoping the team will pull a Nextlander and continue the work on an even more unhinged pirate ship, but I understand that everyone is in a different personal situation and it’s not as easy or as desirable as I might wish. And hope everyone will figure out a way to land on their feet.
So: I’m just going to thank everyone for the years of fun, education and radicalization and pour one out for the team. I’ll relish the last few pods we are getting and shout out loud with them: fuck capitalism, go home!
I’ve never commented here before, but I’ve been listening to/reading/watching Waypoint since it launched and… yeah. I’ve been kind of girding myself for this given the general state of Vice, but it’s still a gut punch. I can’t even imagine how the crew feel.
Even if I was more of a lurker than anything, it made me really happy to know that Waypoint and its community existed, especially in recent years. It was a pleasant island in an otherwise still pretty bleak-and-not-necessarily-getting-better space.
I hope Austin, Patrick, et al., are proud of it, even with this kind of ending.
Feel really devastated by the news; Waypoint had become the last place where I could follow funny and insightful game criticism, made by amazingly talented people. I hope Cado, Ren, Patrick and Rob can figure out the best next step possible for them, and I want to thank everyone that’s been part of Waypoint over the years for the incredible work they’ve done.
I’m glad the community will stick around in some way. The people here are toughtful and welcoming, and have inspired me to do my best to participate even when I’m feeling awkward putting thoughts into words. May the Waypoint motto keep standing strong for all of us. FCGH
A quick second response here to shout out to the mods and their plans for keeping this forum community going (and to the mods over on the Discord server for the same). In the modern internet it is all too easy to lose a space like this and the connection to the people on it.
I only joined this forum when Waypoint+ launched and quickly discovered it was a place where I could talk to like-minded people about games in a way that I hadn’t found anywhere else, something which I suppose is only appropriate given what Waypoint itself brought to games media.
I have no idea what the team at Waypoint will do next; I will cautiously add my hope to any idea that they might pursue a direct-to-subscriber model because there’s clear evidence there’s an audience - us! - who’ll support them doing that, but I totally appreciate that may not be enough to keep multiple full-time salaries paid and the whole crew have lives beyond keeping us entertained. But even absent Waypoint or any successor, I look forward to hanging out with y’all for some time to come.
Gutted to hear this. My listening had dropped off a bit (every week to here and there) but it was such a vital voice maybe the vital voice left in gaming criticism. Alluding to what Sam Barlow said, you can’t have great art without corresponding great critics and shouts to the Waypoint crew for being terrific critics and not letting that go to their heads. Our humble legends.
I will always cherish the crew for saying the things I thought more eloquently and I will curse the crew for making me a Kingdom Hearts fan.
