The Escapist and the trouble with content publishers.

The most recent drama that has exploded across the interwebs regarding the dispute between Extra Creditz and The Escapist would be pretty unsurprising to those who have been monitoring the health of the industry at large. The gradual conversion of TE from a pioneer in mature perspectives on the impact of gaming to a media portal, was largely based on the success of Zero Punctuation, which catapulted the traffic into the weekly millions.

Provided with the possibility of a new business plan to move "beyond the text" and indulge in more of those video based monies, The Escapist scoured the 'net to expand its video portfolio. Before long, the monthly "issues" that originally made the front page focus of the site were marginalized to a few articles and various video series' became the bread and butter of lucrative advertising revenue.

The sheer number of various channels should have raised a few suspicions to the viability of the whole enterprise. The numbers that are coming out of the tens of thousands of dollars in dispute means that TE were promising more then they were reasonably able to provide. Other video based portals like Gametrailers, Screwattack and Channel Awesome compete with TE for those cult-based dollars, and the market, to be frank, just isn't large enough to sustain them all.

Advertising has never been a spectacular earner on its own for content publishers, and I heavily doubt TE are making much on top of the commissions promised to their media creators. The specifics of the dispute aside, what has been agreed on both sides and by other producers is that the Escapist is operating largely on credit. Many people have piped up claiming they haven't been paid for months, if at all, and that the issue that has plagued freelance writers for so long has now spread to video creators.

The fact of the matter is, if you can't afford to pay your staff, don't promise to pay them in the first place. I understand that it must be difficult to keep the hundreds of thousands of liquid capital on hand to pay your bills, but just because the power company and the bank are bigger and angrier then your employees, the money owed to them is equally, if not more, important.

I understand that avenues like The Escapist give unknowns the opportunity for a larger audience, but that excuse does not play when it comes to relying on IOUs. Banking up your debts is a great way to go bankrupt, taking out all of the people who have spent weeks and months generating goodwill and traffic for your website.

There are millions of game related sites on the net, making it one of the most contested markets for consolidated internet advertising revenue. Poking your head above the rest is not simply based on content saturation but content quality. If you're a publisher and are finding it difficult to pay the bills, it might be worth looking at your stable and re-evaluating your position.

It's not fair to expect people to work for free. Sort out your shit, Escapist.