In March, Silicon Valley Bank customers triggered a massive bank run that resulted in the bank’s failure when they withdrew their money due to speculation regarding the bank’s financial problems. As a result, companies with money deposited couldn’t make withdrawals. Everyone wondered how this would affect corporations and tech startups but no one thought about how it would affect the workers they employed. I am a freelancer negatively affected by the SVB collapse and I never expected to be.
Being a freelancer means that I’m self-employed and do not work for a company long-term. I don’t receive full-time employee benefits and I sign a contractor agreement that can be canceled at any time. In 2021, I briefly wrote for Esports news website DotEsports as a freelancer. The site is owned by Gamurs, a media network that currently owns 15 websites covering video games.
I once again became a freelancer for Gamurs in 2022 when they purchased GamerJournalist.com, a site I had already been writing for. Once Gamurs took over, I no longer had as much freedom as I once did. This was understandable as it was a small site that was just purchased by a company worth millions of dollars.
Eventually, I questioned whether I should continue writing for them. It was great to stay active as a writer and add to my portfolio but with Gamurs in charge, I was mostly writing about topics I didn’t care about just to fulfill a monthly quota of 25 articles. However, compared to the other freelance gigs I had, it was the most consistent. I could always count on getting paid every month until I couldn’t.
When news first broke of the SVB collapse, I didn’t follow it closely. Once I learned that this would affect my monthly payment, I started paying close attention. I always sent in my invoice for the month between the 1st and the 5th and would receive payment on the 12th. If the 12th fell on a weekend, my payment would be slightly delayed. For March, this was the case. I knew I’d be paid on either Monday or Tuesday so I didn’t worry.
I became alarmed once I checked the Gamurs Slack channel for freelancers. Every freelancer was informed by an HR employee that payments would be delayed due to the closure of SVB. Between the 12th and 15th, we received constant updates in Slack about the status of our payments. Gamurs pays their employees through a platform called Gusto which showed that we were paid already even though nothing was in our bank accounts.
On the 15th, I emailed HR informing them that I still hadn’t been paid. They responded by saying they were working hard to resolve the issue. My payment eventually did go through, but Gusto still says I was paid on the 14th. This situation set off a red flag for me. I thought, “If this happened this month, it’s probably happening again next month.” Unfortunately, I wouldn’t get the chance to find out for sure.
On March 20th at 2:15 AM, I received an email informing me that my contractor agreement with Gamurs was canceled due to the fallout of the SVB collapse and the need for Gamurs to significantly improve its operational inefficiencies. I, along with over 50 other journalists, had my access to the WordPress site and Slack channel revoked. The email ends by telling me to submit an invoice by the 31st for work I had already completed. I didn’t have much work done at this point in the month which meant that my final payment from Gamurs was well below the usual amount.
This left me frustrated. For months, I was told how my hard work was helping improve the site’s traffic and then I see an internal email from the Gamurs CEO mentioning underperforming content. Situations like this are expected when you’re a freelancer but you can’t help being frustrated. This situation in particular is not only indicative of issues with our banking system but the decline of gaming journalism as well.
Like SVB, Gamurs made investments that didn’t quite pan out for them and as a result, the workers suffered. The CEOs will release their statements before buying more websites that all cover the same topic before they lay off the staff for not getting enough web traffic. Despite my disappointment and frustration, I haven’t been deterred from working in journalism. In fact, I’m more motivated than ever to continue looking for a better position. I won’t let a bank collapse or one CEO’s poor decisions stop me.
The Soap Box 