Tencent gutted Fanbyte's staff — and lost control of its Instagram account

Tencent is the world's biggest gaming company, holding stakes in Riot Games, Epic Games, Roblox and Discord, with more than $88 billion in revenue the year before. After posting its first-ever revenue decline, it cut about 5% of its workforce — roughly 5,000 people. On September 15, 2022 the cuts reached Fanbyte, the gaming publication it owned, and took nearly the entire editorial staff.

The process itself drew the backlash: employees were laid off one by one over several hours, watching co-workers tweet about job hunts while waiting to learn their own fate. Staff cut included the editor-in-chief, head of media, features editor, social editor, news editor, graphic designer, podcast producer and several writers, according to Merritt K, one of the last remaining staff. Tencent did not respond to a request for comment.

The final flourish: the laid-off social media manager still had account access. For hours the Fanbyte Instagram bio read 'Tencent made $35 billion in net income last year snd laid off almost every member of child company Fanbyte! Please support the staff elsewhere :)' under the display name 'forgot the keys?'

The TechCrunch report framed the episode against the arithmetic: gutting a good publication to save 'a couple hundred thousand dollars a year' — a fraction of a fraction of a percent of Tencent's net income — and asked whether the biggest media companies would ever stop doing it.

Fanbyte lost its editor-in-chief, heads of media, features and news, a social editor, designer, podcast producer and several writers — nearly the whole staff.

Games media looked non-core next to Tencent's $88 billion revenue, so its costs were cut despite tiny absolute savings.

The drawn-out one-by-one process maximized the distress and the public backlash compared with a single announcement.

Operations hygiene failed alongside strategy: the social media manager was laid off before her account access was revoked.

Cutting a small beloved team from an $88 billion company saves pocket change and costs reputation — and revoke account access before you fire the social media manager.

The Instagram stunt became the story's emblem, screenshotted across social media. TechCrunch argued the future of games media lay with independent outlets, and Fanbyte — a site with a devoted readership — was left without most of the people who made it.