Byline: Shannon Liao and Nathan Grayson

Video games are a big topic of conversation on Twitter, generating 2.4 billion tweets last year. On new owner Elon Musk's Twitter, where major executives and nearly half of the company's workforce have been purged, and where generating revenue is the priority, gaming still has a place. But the drastic changes the company and its more than 200 million daily active users face are reverberating across the gaming community and industry.

In May, Twitter's global head of gaming partnerships, Rishi Chadha, said in an interview with The Washington Post: "When people think about gaming, they're thinking about the Twitches of the world, the YouTubes of the world. And it's like actually, you can't forget what Twitter is doing. Twitter's been that home for conversation and it's been silently there."

Gamers flock to Twitter to talk about their favorite games, to meme, to angrily respond to unwanted game changes and more. Content creators use the platform to reach their audiences, and some try to monetize their presence, to varying degrees of success. During major gaming events, regular users and influencers share their live reactions.

But all of that may change. On Nov. 4, Musk laid off about 3,700 Twitter employees, almost half of the workforce. More employees resigned this week, following a sudden mandatory-return-to-office policy.

As part of a move to cut costs, Musk fired employees in marketing, content moderation and other departments he has indicated will be less of a priority. Many members of revenue-generating teams such as partnerships and sales were retained. The marketing side of Twitter Gaming, which spent company money to make indirect income, was let go. Chadha, who oversaw a moneymaking team, has kept his job, he confirmed last Friday.

It's "the end of an era," said a former Twitter employee with knowledge of how Twitter Gaming worked. "Bird ain't gonna be the same."

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If you've never heard of Twitter Gaming, that was on purpose, according to the former employee. Part of reaching gamers organically on social media meant not forcefully shoving a brand down their throats. Twitter Gaming used a lighter touch - consistently replying to tweets and promoting creators and large events.

Twitter Gaming's original goals were to earn money for Twitter and gaming companies, keep the gaming conversation going and make video clips, live broadcasts and highlights more accessible to users, according to Chadha. Gaming is a multibillion-dollar industry; this approach from Twitter mirrored attempts by tech companies like Apple, Meta, Google and most notably Microsoft (which owns Xbox and is in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard) to earn a slice of the pie.

While Twitter Gaming was not well known across the company or to users, it planned to change that over time. Before Musk taking over and privatizing the company, Twitter published blog posts in January and July highlighting the presence of gaming on its platform. According to Twitter, there were 1.5 billion tweets about gaming in the first half of 2022, compared...