We're opening up freelance opportunities at Rogue

Something we really loved doing when Rogue first launched was working with freelancers. Both giving opportunities to our former Polygon friends who lost their jobs alongside us as well as new voices.

The industry is in a weird place – in case you haven't heard – and a bunch of veteran writers no longer have a home to call their own. And even those that made their own home (hi) are a long way off from making the kind of money they did at their old gigs. This creates a kind of wasteland where opportunities are hard to come by for those with experience, but even harder to come by for people trying to break in.

One of our goals has always been to be able to help foster new and young writers, offering both compensation and experience in an environment where we have more time to coach than our editors did. We're hoping to do that now.

As Rogue enters 2026, you're going to see us start to lean harder into recommendation and curation – more on that coming soon. That's impressions, reviews, previews, and guides angled to help you, our readers, find games that are worth your extremely limited time. Sometimes that's the big AAA stuff, but more often it's the gems like BALL x PIT , The Bazaar, Tower Factory, or Dogpile.

But we have a limited perspective. We're pretty queer as a bunch, but we're also four white writers in our 30s and 40s. We like to think we're not blind to BIPOC perspectives, but we don't have the authority to speak to them. And, as much as we want to believe we still represent "young," that case is getting hard to argue.

So we want you to pitch to us, regardless of how similar or different your perspectives are to us.

Tell us about a game you're loving. Maybe it's new. But maybe it's a little old and people missed it. Maybe it's coming soon and you've gotten your hands on a copy or a playtest and you want to tell people about it. Maybe you just have something awesome to say about the Pragmata demo, or some big AAA game coming up. We want to hear from you (and we'll have instructions below).

But before you spring to your feet and start typing us an email, it must be said that we are a small business. Very small. We cannot pay you what we would like to pay you. We cannot even pay you what we believe you're worth. This, initially, put us off of even offering freelance at all. But we've received some wisdom from former colleagues and been reminded that it's easy to turn people away when you already have a platform. It's easy to say "don't work for free like we did" when we have contacts and a foot in the door.

So we're striking a middle ground best we can. We can offer $50 for a piece – small recommendation or longer review, we won't constrain you.

We promise not to let anyone write for free. We promise to raise rates as we raise our own salaries. We promise to offer opportunities for consistent work with freelancers when we can. We think you are worth more, and we'll never be upset if you get the chance and take a better opportunity.

As long as you know all of that and still want to work with us, we'd love to hear your pitch. If you're interested in writing for us, please send a pitch to: pitches@rogue.site

Ideally, your pitch will include the following:

• Suggested headline
• Thesis
• Larger paragraph description of the thing you'd like to write for us
• Estimated word count
• Estimated submission date
• Any timely info (like if you already have a code and there is an embargo) or if the post is evergreen
• Contact information

Pitches are open right now! As you are reading this! So get to it.

We hope to build some great relationships with some young writers trying to get a foot into the industry, and hopefully give folks a place where they can write, publish, and get experience so they can eventually do all of that somewhere where they'll make more money.

Thank you to all of our supporters so far. There are a lot of independent options out there, and things are pretty rough right now. With you're help, we are able to continue doing what we've always done: make gaming a little easier to enjoy and finding joy together.