Why I’m Walking Away From X — It Was Never About Me

An X Is an X for a Reason

After falling impressions and weeks of support conversations, I am stepping away from X. This is not about making myself more visible. It is about the people whose stories we publish—and where our time can do the most good.

I have been saying that X is an X for a reason. It started as a joke. Three weeks after the October support exchange, I am starting to think there is a point to it.

I am stepping back from X as a regular outlet for our work. I am not deleting the past, telling everyone else to leave, or claiming that nobody can succeed there. I am deciding where to put my time. And I would rather spend it finding the next great developer story than trying to convince a social platform to show the stories we have already published.

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This was never about me

I run Fix Gaming Channel, an independent gaming publication. We report on games, interview developers, and invite creative people to tell their own stories. Sometimes that means interviewing an established studio. Sometimes it means talking to someone building a game on weekends, with no large marketing budget and no one else telling their story.

When I share one of those articles, the point is not that my account gets another thousand views. The point is that someone who spent years—or even a few difficult months—making something has a chance to find an audience. If the link reaches almost nobody, it is not just my number on a dashboard that suffers. That creator loses one possible introduction to a player.

That is the part I kept trying to explain to support. I was not asking them to make me famous. I was asking why the people behind our articles were so difficult to reach through the platform.

I checked the numbers

In our X export, the median impressions per post or reply fell from 93.5 for posts dated September 2026 to 33 for posts dated October 1–18—roughly a 65% drop. That comparison uses mixed posts and replies, and the October posts were newer when the export was taken. It shows a change in the recorded results, not why that change happened.

Here is what those numbers look like when attached to real people. Our October 16 post sharing Matteo Angeloni’s NO AI ACT story recorded 36 impressions and zero URL clicks. The October 17 post sharing our Bleach & Blood coverage and developer answers recorded 54 impressions and zero URL clicks. Those figures were captured in the October 18 export, not measured again today.

There were exceptions. One invitation to indie developers to share their games in our Reddit community recorded 648 impressions. Our account was not literally invisible. But the contrast made me question whether continuing to invest so much energy in X was worthwhile.

The support conversation that changed my mind

Our September Under the Hood report showed zero post labels and zero account labels across 44 posts. I also reported a search test where a distinctive post was not found by a non-follower but appeared after that account followed us. Neither observation, by itself, proves a shadow ban or an intentional restriction. But both deserved a specific answer.

Instead, I received repeated explanations about personalization, engagement, and the follow graph. One Premium Support representative, who introduced themselves as Clay, offered four familiar tips: post authentically, use engaging media, share relevant content, and promote the account.

Promote your Account: Increase visibility by consistently posting. Consider running promoted posts to expand your audience further.

I told support I was already doing those things. We publish original reporting and creative stories. I was paying for Premium+, and I had previously paid for promotion without seeing satisfactory results. I did not need another beginner’s guide to posting. I wanted someone to investigate the reported problem.

There is a certain irony in paying every month for a blue checkmark while the stories I care most about struggle to be seen. I paid X every month for a blue checkmark. Apparently, the invisibility cloak came free. I can laugh about it, but there is a serious point behind the joke.

At the end of the year, the subscription and the promotions are real expenses. Money spent while too many of the stories we shared barely saw the light of day on X. For a self-funded publication, those costs add up. I would rather spend that money—and the time spent arguing about visibility—bringing another independent creator’s work to readers.

To be precise, that support message did not say unpaid posts are completely hidden, nor did it establish that organic reach sits behind a paywall. But telling a publisher worried about falling visibility to consider spending more money—without providing findings from an account-specific check—is exactly the response I was questioning.

Even X’s own guidance acknowledges that ranking, experiments, spam detection, and technical issues can affect visibility. The replies in our correspondence did not establish whether any such factor explained our experience.

Our website kept growing

At the same time, our own website continued growing and people in the gaming industry kept finding us. That does not mean every article succeeds, or that X is the reason for every underperforming link. It means the work has a home—and that home is not a social media account.

We built Fix Gaming Channel as a website first. The social channels are supposed to support it, not become the reason we spend less time on journalism. I do not want to measure the value of an interview by whether an algorithm decided to surface its link.

So I am no longer treating X as a channel we need to keep feeding or promoting from our website. I would rather direct readers to the articles, our newsletter, and the places where they can genuinely connect with the people making these games.

And who knows? Maybe my X pops up again

I am not making a lifelong promise never to use X again. Platforms change. People change. Perhaps one day it will offer a better experience for sharing independent work, and perhaps I will give it another try.

For now, I have games to play, people to interview, articles to publish, and creative voices to bring forward. They will be here whether X shows them or not.

An X is an X for a reason. And who knows? Maybe this one will pop up again.

Editorial note: Fix Gaming Channel previously offered X a 12-hour opportunity to answer specific questions. This article reflects the support messages available for review. Any substantive later response will be considered for a dated update. The analytics discussed here are from an export ending October 18, 2026, not a current November measurement.

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