We're updating our subscriber benefits and launching some new Monday features

Over the past six months, we’ve learned a lot about running a website. Or at least, we’ve learned a lot about running this website, and we want to make some changes to what we’re offering our subscribers.

Initially, we planned to lock certain articles behind our paywall. We liked that idea in theory, but we kind of started setting everything to “free member” by default. And we liked doing it, because it allowed a wider audience to enjoy our writing, which is kind of why we’re here.

So, we’ve re-thought what we’re actually offering our beloved paid subscribers. Below, we’re going to walk you through our new additions, then we’ll tell you what each tier gets, and end with what’s changing around podcasts and some of the other offerings we’re moving away from (at least for the moment).

Discord access!

One of the biggest additions to the Rogue family and subscription offerings is something we’ve been talking about internally for 6 months: our Discord server.

In our paid-only Discord server (which launched last week!) you’ll be able to jump in, chat with us on the main channels AND chat with your fellow Rogues. We’ve already got a pretty active game recommendation channel where both staff and fellow readers have jumped in to offer some niche picks!

The Discord is also where we’ll drop polls and things of that nature for our new Monday projects …

Big Money Mondays

We want to add more value to those of you that subscribe already, and make it easier than ever to convert folks who are free users but are on the fence about supporting us financially. So we’re going to launch a new project, which has three different components which we’ll rotate between.

Make ‘Em Play - Bi-monthly let’s play and Q&A

Our version of Let’s Plays, Make ‘Em Play involves two Rogues, and will be a stream we do on Monday mornings/afternoons between our other Monday features. These will be longer projects, typically, and involve one Rogue recommending a game to the other.

Starting today, Ryan will be playing Myst on stream with Jeff. Ryan is going in blind, and it’s one of Jeff’s favorite games of all time. But since we’re playing the remake, it’ll be a little fresh (at least visually) to both of them.

These streams will obviously be free on our Twitch, as will the VODs we put up on our YouTube channel and on the site.

However, for all streams after Myst, the Rogues will present Mini-Boss and Big Boss subscribers with a few different options of recommendations and pairs of players (Ryan and Cass go through Disco Elysium, etc). Options that don’t get picked will remain on the docket for the next voting round! 

We’ll also be answering a handful of questions about the games, ourselves, and running Rogue from the Discord in each of these Make 'Em Play streams and Vods.

(Discord users will also be able to contribute votes to Make 'Em Play, but we will weight Mini-Boss and Big Boss votes significantly higher)

Rogue Revisits  - Monthly lookback project

We’re going to be recommending mostly new games to you in our new bi-weekly newsletter, which we’ll talk about more below. But there are approximately a billion great games that have already come out, and some of them are quite old.

With Rogue Revisits, one of the Rogues will revisit a great game from five or more years ago that maybe didn’t get the love it deserved. And then we’ll write about it on the site exclusively for our paid readers. We’ll evaluate it based on when it came out, but also tell you how well it holds up. Critically, we’ll also tell you how you can play it in 2026 so that this doubles as a bit of game preservation.

Ryan will be starting the first Rogue Revisits the second Monday of March with a look back at Overlord, that weird Pikmin-like LOTR spoof game from the early 2000s.

In the future, Mini-Boss and above tiers will be able to vote from a list of potential games for Rogue Revisits.

(Discord users will also be able to contribute votes, but we will weight Mini-Boss and Big Boss votes significantly higher)

Logjam - Monthly lookback project

All of us have backlogs, even (and especially) those of us fortunate enough to work in this industry. Getting to those games seems like it should be easy, but then it’s years later and somehow you’ve never gotten to Alan Wake (ahem, Jeff).

The goal of Logjam is to offer a chance for our readers to reverse recommend things to us. I love hearing from people as they experience some of my favorite games for the first time – if you’ve never watched a fresh Let’s Play of Outer Wilds, I can’t recommend it enough. That’s the goal here, but via a monthly essay!

Every month, one of the Rogues will provide a list of three to five games on their backlog. Then Mini-Boss and Big Boss subscribers will vote on which game the Rogue should play. They’ll then come back a month later to write about the game for Logjam, which will be available to read for all paid subscribers!.

Jeff is taking our first Logjam, which will show up near the end of March. Jeff has shamefully not played any Remedy games. So you can select from Control and Alan Wake 2, just to name two.

Here is the list of Jeff games you'll be able to vote on for March:

• Alan Wake 2
• Control
• Citizen Sleeper
• Disco Elysium
• What Remains of Edith Finch?

Note that this is a different feature than our annual staff game’s club, which can only be voted on by our Big Boss subscribers! That will show up on our anniversary this year as a spoiler-filled podcast after everyone on staff plays it! Look for a vote on that at the end of May.

(Discord users will also be able to contribute votes to Logjam, but we will weight Mini-Boss and Big Boss votes significantly higher)

Rogue Likes paid bi-monthly newsletter

We’re transforming the best part of our Rogue Signal podcast into a bi-monthly newsletter, which will go out on Wednesdays every other week.

Unlike our free Friday newsletter, Rogue Likes won’t focus on what we’ve published that week. Instead, each newsletter will include three game recommendations, each written by a different staffer or guest!, highlighting each of our unique tastes. More often than not, those will be completely new games that haven’t appeared elsewhere on the site in a written review or preview.

Our goal here isn’t to gatekeep great games – which is why we’ll still be publishing impressions and reviews on the site for free members every single week – but to also recommend even more games to our most invested readers!

What does each subscription tier get you?

We still have three subscription tiers, and our prices will remain the same as they have been (once our awesome sale ends on March 9!). But we’ve added all of the above new features to the sub tiers, and taken away some of the things we’re moving away from – which we talk about a bit more below.

Here’s a quick at-a-glance for what you get from each subscription (since you weirdly can’t see it after you actually subscribe on Ghost).

Free

• Weekly newsletter 
• Access to all non-Big Money Monday articles
• Access to all news and guides
• Access to Vod articles of our bi-monthly Q&A/gameplay stream

Roguelite

• Weekly newsletter 
• Full access to every Rogue article 
• Comment access
• Exclusive access to the Rogue Discord channel
• Access to our monthly backlog series
• Access to our monthly throwback series
• Ability to submit questions to our bi-monthly Q&A stream via Discord
• Subscriber only bi-monthly recommendations newsletter
• Occasional voting opportunities

Mini-Boss

• Weekly newsletter 
• Full access to every Rogue guide and article 
• Comment access
• Exclusive access to the Rogue Discord channel
• Access to our monthly backlog series
• Vote on which game our monthly backlog player will play
• Access to our monthly throwback series
• Vote on which throwback game our monthly backlog player will write about
• Ability to submit questions to our bi-monthly Q&A stream via Discord
• Vote on which game our bi-monthly stream will play through next
• Subscriber only bi-monthly recommendations newsletter

Big Boss

• Weekly newsletter 
• Full access to every Rogue guide and article 
• Comment access
• Exclusive access to the Rogue Discord channel
• Access to our monthly backlog series
• Vote on which game our monthly backlog player will play
• Access to our monthly throwback series
• Vote on which throwback game our monthly backlog player will write about
• Ability to submit questions to our bi-monthly Q&A stream via Discord
• Vote on which game our bi-monthly stream will play through next
• Subscriber only bi-monthly recommendations newsletter
• Vote on a game for us to play and discuss for our annual "Book Club"
• Have your name included on our "About Us" page
• Our unremitting gratitude
• A sense of inner peace

Is there anything that’s going away?

With our new focus on recommendations, our new shows, and the bonus newsletter, we’re shifting away from two items that used to be subscriber benefits.

First, we’re pulling away from podcasts for the foreseeable future. We enjoy doing them, but they take up a lot of time, and we’re a small team. So Rogue Signal is on indefinite hiatus, but we hope we can bring it back sometime in the future!

As far as the podcast boys (as we call them) and their Pat’s Labor podcast, you’ll still see them post on our site when a new episode drops, and we’ll still share it around on our socials (because we love them, and the show is awesome). But we’re going to be separate endeavors for both of our benefits.

This allows for a couple of different things. First, it frees up a bit of cash on our end, which is partially how we’re able to have more freelance than before! It’s not much, but it makes a difference. It also lets the boys control their own fate a bit more. We’ll make sure to share any future plans when they have them, but we’re excited based on what we’ve talked about behind the scenes. 

Just to make it extremely clear: we love Clayton, Toussaint, and Pat. They’ll always be part of the original site founders, and this move away from them being attached to our benefits was agreed to by both parties. We’re hoping you’ll still see them pop on the site for a recommendation on our newsletter a few times a year too! But with kids, other jobs, and other podcasts, they’re super busy. 

Finally, the Announcements section is being sunset. This kind of section makes perfect sense for our friends at Rascal, as there are fewer tabletop sites out there and it’s a great way for games to get the word out without tying the Rascal team up with news. But, if you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of game sites out there, both indie and corporate. Getting announcements out just isn’t in very high demand. We haven’t used it very much, devs haven't used it much, and so it’s going away to help clean up the website a bit.

As a part of these changes, we’re going to be removing the paywalls from any articles that used to have them, as the pay wall is now primarily for the features above and supporting the team. We'll have an article going out soon that highlights some of our favorite paid pieces, which you can now read for free!

All of these changes go into effect today, March 2! Thank you to all of you who have supported us the past six months, and to our new subscribers who have jumped in because of the sale. Your subscription goes directly to the website and us, and we couldn't do it without you.

If you're a free reader and you like what we're doing, we'd love for you to join us while our subscriptions are on sale (it ends March 9). And if you're still not ready to dive in yet, that's OK too. Everything you've come to expect from us will remain in place even after these changes.

More recommendations, impressions, reviews, guides, previews, and interviews are coming your way in 2026 whether you subscribe or not.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support.