Last week, Steam quietly announced a new rule banning “certain kinds of adult-only content” that “may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks.” Following this, reporter Ana Valens wrote a series of stories on Vice’s video games vertical Waypoint about an organization called Collective Shout that took credit for the changes on Steam as part of a campaign aimed at payment processors. Valens says Vice’s owner, Savage Ventures, demanded the removal of the articles; Valens and several other Waypoint writers quit in response.
Two articles were removed from Waypoint Sunday morning: a July 18 article titled “This Group Takes Responsibility For Steam’s Payment Processor Censorship Policies–They Just Implied ‘Pervert Nerds’ Cause Society’s Problems and a July 19 article titled “Group Behind Steam Censorship Policies Have Powerful Allies–And Targeted Popular Games With Outlandish Claims.” Valens told Aftermath she was informed by Waypoint managing editor Dwayne Jenkins Sunday morning that leadership at Savage Ventures had ordered Jenkins to remove the articles; Valens informed Jenkins that she would quit her Waypoint contributing role if this happened and, once it did, announced her departure.
Valens said that both articles had been edited and approved by Jenkins, though did not go through pre-publication legal review. Valens told Aftermath that, as far as she’s aware, there was no legal threat from Collective Shout or other entities over the contents of the articles, though tells Aftermath it’s “possible that [Savage Ventures] simply were afraid of one coming eventually.”
As PCGamer notes, “The two retracted articles from Waypoint appear to be the first among the games press to point out the connection between Collective Shout and the recent changes on Steam, a connection which is public knowledge—by Collective Shout’s own statements—and not an allegation made by Waypoint against the group.”
Valens discussed the situation further in a Twitch stream Sunday morning, in which she claimed that Savage Ventures had previously worried about how Waypoint articles covering sexual or political topics might affect the site’s performance on Google. Valens said on stream that “I’ve been told very specifically with a number of articles that it’s an issue with… Google, Google overlords. We actually had to fight very hard to keep some of our more politically-oriented VTuber coverage up because [Savage Ventures] were nervous it was going to be too R-rated for Google… I was told especially [of issues with] Google Discover.” Valens pointed out on stream that the July 19 article had spread particularly widely on social media, including Reddit.
Requests for comment to email addresses for Vice and Savage Ventures bounced.
Following Valens’ announcement that she was leaving Waypoint, she posted on Bluesky that “Savage Ventures requested I no longer contribute to VICE… several hours after my announcement.” Later on Sunday, Waypoint writers Shaun Cichacki and Matt Vatankhah both announced they were quitting the site. “I can’t sit back and watch Savage Ventures silence Ana and stifle actual journalism out of fear of being ‘too controversial,’” wrote Vatankhah, while Cichacki wrote that “I cannot stand by and watch [Valens] be censored for doing her job and doing it properly.”
“Dwayne was a great boss to me,” Valens told Aftermath, adding, “The team I worked with at Waypoint treated me with the utmost respect and care. They were great colleagues.” Jenkins voiced support for Waypoint’s current and former writers on Bluesky, noting “At further risk to myself, that’s all I can say at the moment.”
Waypoint previously removed several articles by Valens about VTuber Kirsche Verstahl following Verstahl releasing an “open letter” about the coverage that read in part “I don’t want to go to court over this. But… what else am I supposed to do?” An article by Jenkins about harassment Valens faced surrounding her VTuber coverage was also removed. Waypoint also previously cancelled a column Valens planned to write about adult games, and, Valens says, Savage Ventures, “wanted to pull an article I did on right-wing extremism in VTubing due to its political content” and over how “such political extremism could impact our standing with Google Discover.” Valens noted to Aftermath that, despite this seeming concern over Waypoint’s content, articles about zoophilia and “gooning” appear on Vice itself.
Taking down articles is considered one of the cardinal sins of journalism at many outlets, especially if the outlet believes the article to be factual and to meet its editorial standards. (No public reason was given by Vice for the recent articles’ removals.) Most outlets will update, edit, or amend editor’s notes to articles rather than remove them wholesale. Many outlets will also have sensitive stories go through multiple rounds of editorial and legal review before publication, though the scope of this process varies from outlet to outlet.
Waypoint’s process is unusual in this regard, in that Valens told Aftermath most stories, once approved by Jenkins, are edited after publication. Some sensitive stories are edited beforehand, which Valens told Aftermath happened with the July 18 story but not the July 19 one. Valens told Aftermath that “I do think Savage Ventures did not give adequate editorial support to Waypoint and Dwayne. During my time there, there wasn’t a second editor on staff to help with shepherding out news stories on any sensitive subject matters, whether my own work or others.’”
A lack of editors at Waypoint (or many journalism outlets these days) is unsurprising: Vice shuttered the original Waypoint in April 2023, and much of its staff went on to form worker-owned outlet Remap. Vice declared bankruptcy in February 2024 and laid off the majority of its staff, then was relaunched in May of that year under the steam of Nashville-based “venture operator” Savage Ventures. In October 2024 Waypoint began publishing again with new writers. Valens said on her stream that she was paid $30 an article; a contributor to the previous iteration of Waypoint, Nick Capozzoli, said rates used to be at least $300.
Underpaid writers, understaffed sites, and ownership that feels no allegiance to the work their sites produce is pretty much par for the course in games journalism these days. As experienced reporters and editors leave or are forced out of the field, and as sites fall into the hands of private equity or traffic-obsessed conglomerates, there’s less support for writers day to day, and less support for sites from above. Ownership that is distanced from their sites’ writers or sees those sites as revenue sources more than news outlets providing a service to readers has little incentive to stand by a site’s work or to provide it with the editorial or legal support it needs. And, as usual, it’s the writers who pay the price, whether that’s losing their jobs or feeling like it’s necessary to quit.
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