Another media outlet is retreating from gaming. The A.V. Club has laid off its full-time gaming editors as it refocuses its resources on its “core strengths” of movies and TV. It’s the latest casualty of Paste Media ownership repeatedly fumbling the ball. “We regret The A.V. Club couldn’t be a home to expanded video games coverage once again,” the company wrote in a statement.
Paste Media, originally organized around a print music magazine, went online-only in 2010 and expanded into video games with the Paste Games vertical. After several brief tours by different editors, including Kotaku alumnus Kirk Hamilton, it was overseen for 15 years by Garrett Martin, during which time it was an outlet for some of the most insightful and incisive voices in games criticism. Then, in mid-2025, it was briefly spun out as a separately branded entity called Endless Mode.
“EndlessMode.com will expand on the industry-leading games content produced by Paste Games under Garrett Martin’s leadership, bolstering its focus on video games with daily coverage of anime, theme parks, tabletop games, and pinball,” read a press release at the time. The bold and ambitious move didn’t even receive six months of runway before it was quickly folded back into another Paste Media property, The A.V. Club.
“Games are big business. More importantly, though, they’re as vital to the culture and to people’s lives today as movies, TV, music, or any of the other mediums and art forms covered by The A.V. Club,” Martin wrote about the end of Endless Mode in November 2025. The A.V. Club, or at least its owners, no longer seem to agree that gaming is as vital as the rest of those artforms. As a result, both Martin and associate editor Elijah Gonzalez have been laid off.
“The A.V. Club made the difficult decision to eliminate three roles, which included two full-time staff who ran our video games coverage after joining us from Endless Mode,” the site announced on May 1 in a statement shared with Kotaku. “This also includes changing the direction of our television coverage. Our hope is this will allow The A.V. Club to focus on our core strengths: incisive coverage of film and TV through reviews, features, and news. We will continue to have some games coverage, but we cannot sustain a full-time staff covering it with our smaller team.”
Paste Media, owned by Bill Sagan, CEO of Wolfgang’s, a “purveyor of music memorabilia,” hasn’t been a great steward of some of its other recently acquired websites, either. The feminist politics and culture outlet Jezebel, purchased back in 2023, recently lost its Editor-in-Chief with no apparent plan in place for what comes next.
The important legacy of Paste Games, meanwhile, remains scattered across multiple URLs and pocked with link rot. It will live on in the memories of those who wrote for it, and certainly anyone who ever read it and had their imagination ignited by just how how smart, expansive, and personal writing about games could be. “Thanks to everybody who wrote for us, thanks to Eli, Moises, Holly, Jenn, Gita, and Maddy for helping edit it, thanks to Kirk for passing the baton, thanks to Chris for starting it up, and thanks to everybody who ever read it. see ya around,” Martin posted on Bluesky.