Well, Jim is in an awkward position, partly one of his own making. To be honest he's not that big a fish any more, previously he had the exposure of sites like Destructoid and The Escapist who are pretty big time in this arena, reaching a lot of people. As a general rule small independents like what Jim is right now don't get all the bells and whistles like early review copies that those working for well known websites or actually seeing hardcopy distributed. Jim is in a position right now where a company like Square-Enix sending him review copies legitimizes his position and benefits him greatly, where in comparison Squeenix isn't getting all that much from him, the companies that deal with reviewers tend to do it because they benefit from it. Looking at Jim's Youtube traffic you'll notice a lot of his reviews and such wind up with something around 20 to 30k views, compared to someone like say Total Biscuit who has 400k and is a fairly big deal. What's more it doesn't seem a lot of people are exactly forming a Jim Sterling cult of personality and showing up by the numbers, odds are a lot of those people "hitting" Jim also overlap heavily with the big indie personalities, so catering to Jim doesn't exactly give them a lot of exposure.
Of course one also has to look at Jim's behavior as well, a lot of the same things that make Jim appealing to those who ARE his fans are reasons why a big business probably doesn't want to have much to do with him. I agree with his corporate criticisms for example, but those same big gaming companies are probably greatly amused that he lost his platform and don't want to build him back up. When he was at The Escapist they pretty much had to tolerate him if they wanted the traffic the site brought in, which has been fairly decent, despite falling off a lot last year for a lot of reasons, it's still a site people had heard of and was reaching a lot of people within geekdom. What's more despite how amused some people were about it Jim's behavior with the whole "Slaughtering Grounds" thing was hardly professional, granted the company that fired back at him was being a bunch of twits, but he got right down in the gutter with them, and really I can see why a company doesn't want to actively invite someone like that, especially combined with the anti-corporate sentiments, to review their product. Then of course there is the whole political angle to this via "Gamers Gate" where simply put the left wing SJW tendencies just aren't being tolerated as much as they used to be, for a disorganized movement GG did a lot for awareness, and the savvy realize that this is probably going to be fought again and this time GG supporters will likely be a lot better organized and focused. Jim wasn't just a social liberal, he's someone who publically off site was upset because his employer was not censoring people he didn't agree with and felt should not have a platform. Right now that puts him in a rather shaky position, he's lost his big platform, and even though he might build one just as big, right now nobody is in a hurry to build one under him, especially in combination with other things. Then finally, and perhaps just as importantly one has to look at Jim's style, this is a guy who has insulted the anti-gay community in the way he reported on Mass Effect, mimed sex with a blow up doll with "Alien Colonial Marines" taped to it's face, and done perverted things with Amiibo figures. He doesn't go as far as a lot of shock performers in other media, but on some levels he's sort of like the Andrew "Dice" Clay of video game reviewing, a lot of the audience might laugh right along with him (I think he's hilarious for example even when I disagree with his point) but he's not exactly someone a corporation wants representing their product when they have a choice. Jim probably could have overcome any one of these myriad things and gotten his review copy, but taken as a whole it's not surprising he's not being thrown more of a lifeline.
For Jim the big thing is that he needs to become popular on his own and build up his average hits to "Total Biscuit" like levels on his own merits. If anyone can do that it's Jim. I do not think many people within the industry are going to be lining up to help him build that platform however, he's going to have to get there and then those people will shw up when he has the audience again.
That's just my opinion however, to be honest I don't think his involvement with previous Final Fantasy games is much of a factor, since he's hardly the first reviewer to be griped at for not finishing a game, or lying about how much time they put into it. Reviewers get caught by users doing stuff like that all the time and it usually amounts to nothing unless they turn everyone against them.
Despite how it might sound at times I like Jim, even though on a political and social level we probably disagree on most things, and I've gotten the impression he has some awareness of me and doesn't like me much. I do hope for his success and recovery, but it's going to be an uphill battle.
Jim tends to be pretty talented and can be pretty funny, my suggestion for him at this point might be to retire Jimquistion, and stop appearing directly in his videos. If he could get someone else to be a front man for him and largely help with material, or work through something entirely animated or whatever, he might be able to get a new start especially if people don't realize immediatly that it's him, he could then get away from a lot of the bad will he probably inspired from gaming companies, at least until he built up a following again. Simply put he's actually carrying a lot of baggage around on his shoulders right now, most of it was stuff he brought on himself when he had a platform big enough to deal with it, but now that he's lost the sponsorship of a large and well travelled site, I'd imagine he's feeling that weight, and indeed might not have realized how heavy it actually was. A new start might benefit him a lot. I myself have often contemplated retiring my Therumancer identity, I've been Therumancer for several decades, who I am is not a deep dark secret as far as such things go as I haven't gone through any huge lengths to hide, and I'd imagine I'd be easy to Dox if anyone really gave a crap. That said known as "Therumancer" I tend to carry a lot of weight myself at times believe it or not, even if I'm not as well travelled as I once was (and haven't been for years). Jim is on a whole different level though, and in his case it's a matter of livelihood not simply feeling old and tired.
That said, who knows, maybe Squeenix will come around. If not he does have good will in the indie scene, and he might be able to dedicate himself to doing indie games. Though if he does that he's going to have to actually find some good games to promote rather than just covering things that are shades of bad. Protecting consumers from bad games is a good thing, and I appreciate it, but at the end of the day if your going to do the whole gaming personality thing for a living you actually need to get some game creators on your side, to do that with integrity means finding good games and lionizing them, as opposed to the way some people do it where they will pile praise on steaming turds for profit.
