Fired, Not Finished: IGN's Laid-Off Hosts Launch Their Own Podcast Network

Here's a question worth sitting with: what do you do when the thing you built your career on gets pulled out from under you?

Brian Altano and Seth Macy found out last month. Both were longtime hosts at IGN, one of gaming's biggest sites, when another round of layoffs hit. They weren't alone. IGN has been cutting staff in waves, and this latest round took out some of its most recognizable podcast voices.

So what did they do? They didn't wait around for someone else to hire them. They started their own thing.

Altano, Macy, and fellow IGN departure Max Scoville are now running an independent podcast network called X Button. It lives on Patreon, not on some corporate media site with a legal department and a content calendar dictated by ad revenue. Two shows are live so far: X Button, a general gaming podcast, and Ninfriendo 64, built around Nintendo.

On the first episode, Altano summed up the moment with the kind of honesty you don't usually hear from people still polishing their resumes. "There was a slight shift in programming at our former employer," he said, "and we are now out into the great unknown and doing a brand new thing." He added that he hoped by the time listeners heard it, they'd all be crying tears of joy because it worked out.

That's the gamble, isn't it? You don't know if it's going to work until you've already jumped.

I find that part relatable. I've spent years building a life around the idea that the safest path isn't always the one worth taking. When you lose the structure you thought you needed, you find out pretty fast what you're actually capable of building on your own. These three didn't have a five-year plan for this. They had an audience, some mics, and a reason to keep going.

And the reason, according to their own pitch to subscribers, came from the people who'd been listening all along. "We got thousands of comments and messages telling us to keep going," they wrote. Careers that took years to build vanished overnight. That part sucked, they said plainly. But then came the push from their community to pick it back up.

Before the layoffs, Altano and Scoville cohosted IGN's PlayStation show, Beyond! Macy was a fixture on NVC, the network's Nintendo podcast. Now Beyond! is on hiatus. NVC has been cut from a weekly show to something far less frequent. IGN's Xbox podcast, Unlocked, hasn't posted since October 1st. Kotaku reports that Game Scoop, hosted by IGN veteran Daemon Hatfield, is the only show still running on a regular schedule. Staff were reportedly told the other shows just weren't bringing in enough revenue to justify the weekly work.

Here's what makes this interesting: IGN was one of the first big outlets to bet on podcasts back when almost nobody else was doing it. Now it's walking away, right as other media companies are doubling down. The Ringer and Vox Media's podcast network are leaning harder into video content. Some shows are even striking deals to stream on platforms like Netflix alongside actual TV and movies.

So why is IGN pulling back while others push forward? Maybe it's not about whether podcasts work. Maybe it's about who's running them and what they're willing to invest. Kinda Funny, another network started by former IGN staff, has already shown this model can turn a profit when the people running it actually believe in it.

That's the real lesson here. The format isn't dying. The ownership is just changing hands.

Altano, Macy, and Scoville didn't need a corporate green light to keep doing the thing they're good at. They needed a microphone, an audience willing to follow them, and the nerve to start over in public.

That's not a bad blueprint for anybody staring down a sudden change they didn't ask for. The door closes. Fine. Build a new one.

What happens when you stop waiting for permission? Usually, something better.

Source: Kotaku

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