In April of 2017, a small video game news and review site called brashgames.co.uk suddenly became infamous across the online gaming community because of now-former writer Olly Smith, who spoke out about the work-for-exposure policy the site pushes on its talent, as well as the fact that when he eventually quit to pursue writing for publications that would provide monetary compensation, his author credit was removed from every article he had written for the site.

Smith's words did not fall on deaf ears, as the internet was buzzing about the Brash Games controversy before long and video game pundits covered the situation in extensive detail. The backlash against Brash was so extreme that it prompted site owner Paul Ryan to attempt to burn as much evidence of his skullduggery as possible (an attempt which failed completely) and inspired many more authors from Brash Games and similar sites to come forth with their stories and speak out against the false promise of “exposure” touted by so many people around the internet.

This was initially seen as an uncontested triumph, a group of abused artists giving greedy, thieving executives their comeuppance, but the mood quickly ended up on the downswing after it became clear just how prevalent these business practices were. What initially seemed like a characteristic of only the most obscure of these sorts of websites was quickly revealed to be affecting writers almost everywhere.

Even famous Canadian anime Youtuber Geoff Thew, a.k.a. Mother’s Basement, recently spoke out about having been talked into working as a full-time features editor for “exposure,” which never even came close to comparing to the renown brought by the near 700 000 subscriber Youtube channel he made all on his own. Even Destructoid, one of the most famous examples of this sort of publication, had added an intern editorial team to its roster with the promise to pay them with (in their own words) “yellow dresses and Rice-A-Roni.” I couldn’t find much information on these interns, so I don’t necessarily know that they received nothing for their work, but with what we now know about these sorts of sites as well as the dearth of information about them available leads me to believe they too received neither money nor actual exposure.

By now we all know that work for exposure is a bum deal, but it’s a sad fact that plenty of people who want to break into this industry agree to it even knowing that they’re being screwed over, just like I did. With how competitive paying jobs for writers are, it’s not hard to see why authors would feel like this is the only way they can get their foot in the door. But that just simply isn’t the case.

It was once true that writers used to have to depend on corporations to get their names out since that would necessitate expensive processes like printing and shipping, but with how widespread the internet is today, that’s no longer true. Writers don’t have to and shouldn’t settle for payment in “exposure” especially not in an environment where their bosses can simply take that so-called payment back on a whim. If you’re a reading this as an aspiring writer, please know that even if you get any sort of useful hype from a deal like the one I had, there’s little stopping your editor from taking it all away and even if they don’t, a site that isn’t even big enough to pay you with so much as pocket change is extremely unlikely to have the clout to give you any sort of notoriety you can’t simply build on your own.