본문 : ESI - Dafydd Gwynn

Image credit: Dust2, Better Collective

Sports betting media group Better Collective have announced a round of layoffs that have affected around 300 people across the company, including staff from esports coverage sites Dust2.se and Dust2.us.

The layoffs, which include Dust2.us Editor-in-Chief Ryan Friend, Senior Writer Jeff Moore and the entirety of Dust2.se’s staff, will result in Dust2.se being shutdown.

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The outcome first came to light when Friend took to social media to announce that he had been laid off from the company. Dust2.us is a website dedicated to providing news and coverage of the North American Counter-Strike scene.

According to Friend, the news came as a shock as the Dust2.us team continued to hit every target set by Better Collective. However, the parent company had a year of underperformance which led to the layoffs. Friend was also keen to point out that the decision had not come from the HLTV.org team (another one of the media group’s esports sites), but rather Better Collective.

Following this news, full-time Senior Writer Jeff Moore announced that he was being let go from the outlet. Other members of the Dust2.us team, which is made up of freelancers, made similar announcements.

In February 2022, Friend was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Dust2.us after a successful stint at his own company, Rush B Media, which operated purely off of volunteers. In 2022, Rush B Media closed its operations when Friend became the Editor-in-Chief for Dust2.us, however, the outlet returned in 2024 under new management.

Another Dust2 site, Dust2.se, also had a flurry of announcements following the Better Collective layoffs. Despite only being created this time last year, Kalle ‘Hallonkraem’ Strömgren, the site’s Editor-in-Chief, announced that not only was he included in the layoffs, but the entire site is being shut down.

It is important to note that whilst Dust2.se and Dust2.us have been majorly affected by the Better Collective layoffs, all other Dust2 sites (Dust2.br, Dust2.In, Dust2.dk) and HLTV.org itself have not been.

Better Collective purchased HLTV.org in 2020 for a supposed fee of €34.5m (£29.7m). Since then the company has continued expanding into other areas, purchasing FIFA community platform FUTBIN and its related assets for up to €105m (~£87m) in 2022 and expanding into North America. Recently the company has had a tough time financially, seeing its stock value have a large fall.

Whilst this isn’t a typical case of esports winter as the site hasn’t been struggling for numbers, it is yet another case of a gaming or esports news and coverage site experiencing large layoffs. Earlier this year, Gamurs Group and GGRecon were hit with layoffs, with the latter outlet announcing its closure.