No Goodbye Montage for Jeff Gerstmann

Best of Giant Bomb 217 is now out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzHum1HO84

Unless I'm mistaken, this is the first one since Jeff's departure. As I've commented on the video, every Best of Giant Bomb video immediately following the departure of a long time crew member has ended with a big montage of clips of them as a way to look back fondly and say goodbye. The fact that there's no hint of one of the founding members of the site, Jeff Gerstmann, despite the literally thousands of hours of video content he's been in on Giant Bomb that's available for such a montage, is hard to read any way other than disrespectful.

It's also just personally very disappointing for me as I'd love nothing more than a clipshow of Jeff's best moments. Really sad.

Maybe that was part of the exit deal?

I don’t remember there being a specific one for Brad Alex and Vinny either.

@drrobotnikx: They had a whole goodbye stream. There were goodbye streams for Dan and Abby as well.

For the guy that actually created the site.. Nothing. Highly doubt that was Jeff's own wish.

@dragon_puncher: Why do you doubt that?

@drrobotnikx: There's a montage at the end of 211 for those three.

threads like this are destined to devolve into speculation- but i think it's fair to say it was a low-key exit, and both current staff AND gerstmann seemed eager to move on. sure, not the send-off one would expect, but corporate detachments rarely are.

one day someone might spill the beans, but till then it's not our story to tell so probably not best to fixate on it. i doubt the truth of it is worth the energy.

Maybe its time to realize that Jeff was the problem.

Like they told us, it is a new era of transparency.

considering the lack of fanfare over the departure, it would be extremely awkward if there was such a montage.

Everyone has moved on. No need to linger on this anymore, unless they all wanna discuss it some day.

Jeff's gone. It was weird and sudden. But both sides seem to be doing really well in their own ways now.

Hate to say it, but it seems like Jeff G moving on was a good thing for both parties involved. Jeff G seems happy doing his own thing on his own time on Twitch, and the "Giant Bomb Staff" seem happy running the site without him no longer involved. It seems like creative differences were happening and this was the best solution.

Let's just stop that thought right there before someone takes your ridiculous gaffes seriously.

Jeff's obviously moved on, GB has moved on. The stuff Jeff does alone is amazing, what the people of GB do is amazing. It's more content than ever before, now at three locations, a ton of great stuff from Nextlander, GB, Jeff. I think that says it all.

Woz did his thing, Jobs did his thing, people leave, people move on, etc. Life goes on man.

Jeff seems happy, GB seem happy, that's what it's about I think.

@av_gamer: agree 100% - Jeff unleashed is better than Kojima unleashed, he does weird stuff the way he wants to (no strand games though)

People seem to forget that Jan's monologue from the first post-jeff Bombcast mentioned the need for privacy. These circumstances were not ideal, and it wasn't a situation that warranted fond remembrances. Regardless everyone is still making content, as others have mentioned it's good content too.

Personally, I think Jeff wanted to deal with Red Ventures the same way he dealt with CBS. Vinny, Alex, and Brad saw the writing on the wall and decided to head out on their own. Jeff later reached a breaking point, and I'm sure it came after endless corporate meetings with more of the same business talk that he'd heard previously. The healthy thing for him to do was quietly leave the site, and setup his own thing.

So far Bakalar is a suitable successor, and I have no doubt it's because of his time at CNET. JERF's mentioned before that he's good at mingling with higher-ups in corporate environments.

@prl412: Jan also cosigned that absolute shit article announcing Jeff's departure (people were assuming it was written by a lawyer or some corporate type because of how impersonal and disrespectful it was) and announced a "new era of transparency" at GB. I actually like the all the folks here, but the way they handled Gerstmann's exit was trash. This is how companies handle firing a prominent employee who turns out to be a racist or a homophobe, which I'd like to believe doesn't apply to Gerstmann.

@giantrobot24: Eventually this entire thing is going to be retconned into how they live streamed the entire departure by throwing him out of a window along with a locker full of all his stuff.

Jeff's exit has been handled appallingly. But I can't think of any possible outcome where the suggested clipshow doesn't make it even worse.

It doesn't even seem to be in the new best of guy's style anyway.

@giantrobot24: I agree that "transparency" line was hyperbolic as all get out, but I don't think we should pick apart turns of phrase in the team statement. They very careful touched on what needed to be addressed without writing a novel about where it went sideways. With how little information we have, it's hard to assign negative or positive outcomes on the GB team's relationship with Jeff.

Maybe he blew up at a team member, maybe his boss, maybe his family. Or maybe his true emotions were never expressed and started to eat away at him. We just don't know.

Again, this boils down to "Gerstman wanted out". Everyone made the fastest, most efficient split possible. I'm pretty sure nobody wants a going-away party when their mental health is in the dumps.

I've realised my original comments maybe leant the wrong way. I didn't mean to imply that I think it's the GB crew themselves being disrespectful towards Jeff. I think it's much more likely this is executive/management level not respecting how valuable Jeff's presence and legacy is, and it's likely a continuation of the perspective that led to his leaving in such a rushed way with barely any communication from them that didn't just read like frantic "Giant Bomb's not dead, honest!" damage control. That said, as some of you have rightly pointed out, we ultimately don't know the truth of what happened and this veers pretty quickly into speculation.

I guess in the end all of that is secondary, though, to just the sadness at such an ignominious end to a whole era of Giant Bomb. He was a founding member, he was a mentor to many who came after, he was a huge part of the success of the site and the way it changed games coverage. Many of the people who came through Giant Bomb are where they are now in no small part because of him. It's hard to imagine Waypoint or Nextlander even existing without Jeff Gerstmann's influence. That he ended up so unceremoniously ditched from Giant Bomb, with no real farewell and now not even a few minutes of retrospective on all his work through the years is just deeply sad to me. But I suppose some of you are also right that there's probably no satisfying conclusion to be had here anymore, and it's time to move on and stop hoping for one.

@gwardinen:

Can I just say, honestly, well done at reading what other people wrote and coming to a healthy conclusion based on sense and understanding. It's so rare these days that I feel like I need to point it out!

@gwardinen: I dont know about Jeff, but whenever I leave a job I prefer to have a quiet exit. Perhaps he wanted the same who knows?

@gwardinen: That's the cold-blooded nature of the corporate world. But all you have to do is go watch his Twitch show to know that he is happy now. He gets to do things on his own time and say how he really feels about video games and other topics without the fear of getting in trouble with the corporate office. Of course, he still needs to follow the Twitch guidelines, but you get the idea. Jeff was never that kind of guy, as the situation with Gamespot many years ago now proved, which led to Giantbomb existing in the first place. I'm glad the guy kept his integrity over the years. Not many people can say that.

Well wishes and thank you's were given, but the whole event definitely had a "moving on" vibe to it.

Considering how Jeff only mentioned he was leaving one day before doing so, didn't do an interview with Ben Hanson like everyone else who left GB (despite being invited to do so), and how Jeff didn't mention any reason for leaving GB on his new podcast, it kind of seems like not having any farewell stream, last Bombcast, or goodbye montage was maybe more of Jeff's idea than the current GB staff being disrespectful.

The person who does the Best of is no longer TurboMan/Derek Stone. His last Best of was The Best of Vinny, Brad and Alex after they left. Without any speculation on Jeff's situation, I would simply assume the current Best of guy didn't know this was a tradition.

All of this already feels like it happened months ago to me, so probably best to just let it go. Everyone seems happy, but of course I still do wish that we see Jeff and GB cross paths again somehow in the future.

I've seen pro-wrestling threads on what's a shoot and what's a work that made fewer logic leaps and jumps to conclusions than are being made here. Honestly, the man's BECOME one of the most private guys since starting a family, PROBABLY after a life of seeing what being public on the internet gets you. Lately, he really hasn't been "the attention seeker" of the crew either (and that's neither a good nor bad thing, but you compare someone like Jeff and someone like Dan, and it's CLEAR which one wants the spotlight more), but can we PLEASE go back to something more concrete on these forums? Like console wars or whether or not the Wii is worth defending with a...force of some sort?

Is there seriously so little drama going on in the world that people need to manufacture it on this site?

Edited for much better clarity

Are you talking about Jeff Gerstmann? The same guy who always had a Tumblr page open to answer any questions, live-streamed his commute for years, did multiple streams about what he had in his garage, showed us a photo of his wedding, shared photos of his kids, told us thousands of stories of all moments of his life including childhood, teenage years, school, old houses, new houses, old friends, new friends, wife, children, what he did on weekends, etc and now on his new podcast still spends as much time talking about those personal topics as he does talking about videogames?

I agree with you on the rest of your comment, but Jeff was arguably one of the least private guys on the staff.

@gwardinen: It might be an internal thing. Speculation gets no where but he's the head, and maybe they have to cut all ties. Think about people seeing the video on youtube thinking this funny man with heihachi eyebrows will be telling jokes and breaking down why sonic is just ok...then bam he's not. Jeff's also now competing with GB, and swelling away all the fans to him cause lets face it, many main cast left...would be dumb on a job stand point. It's a job and they have to look at their bottom line, not friends. Jeff still has friends and he's doing fine out of GB. I wish fans would get that he likes it better now IMO since he has time for his family and has a kid and no time to be on a site etc. Now he can enjoy time with his wife and kids.

I'm willing to bet that legally there's nothing they can say. It's as simple as that.

Honestly it'd be a little weird to have a Jeff clipshow since it seems pretty obvious his leaving was not a happy occasion (or the leaving was, but not the time preceeding it).

@brainscratch: You are 100% correct, I was off-base and it wasn't even REALLY what I meant. Edited for far better clarity, point intact.

Really doesn't matter the circumstance of the exit, there should be some kind of recognition for the deeds of the past.

It's generally considered professional conduct to look past personal opinion and grievances when it comes to honoring someone's departure.

Yeah, people saying "Jeff is so private, that's why we know nothing" is just straight up kidding themselves. Do you really think Jeff didn't even want to write his own goodbye blog post to the fans on the site he created and ran for 14 years? And if that was really it, he would have just said so in his first solo stream. Instead he adressed that he knew there was going to be a lot of speculation about his departure, but he couldn't talk about it. If one thing did become clear in the first stream Jeff did, it was that he had been completely out of GB for 14 days and it had happened suddenly.

Some sort of deal was made, that made sure Jeff (and maybe the GB staff as well) couldn't talk about the circumstances of his departure publicly. We know Jeff had a lot of problems with RV executives and I think it came to head and he resigned, but instead of giving him his 14 days leave, RV just kicked him out immediately. But that's just speculation, obviously.

Like others have said though, it doesn't really matter a whole lot anymore. Both Jeff and GB seem to be in a better place. But like the story of his firing from CBS, I do hope the real story about this comes out one day.

@dragon_puncher: this happens a lot when there is a change of management, as employees get inexperienced dolts who don't know how to manage people. Then, the resignations then start flooding in and since they are dolts they either take it too personally or don't do a thing about it. I have seen it happen quite a lot and it's sad because employees usually don't ask much just the work environment to remain the same.

I would think that Jeff had an idea on how to run things then the discussion escalated too quickly and they toke it as personal issue which explains how they dealt with his departure.

The thing the staff has asked users to do is not speculate and armchair lawyer about this kind of stuff, yet here we are.

Was no one here around when everything went down at Gamespot in '07? Gerstmann has a track record of pissing off management in some way or another and getting himself defenestrated.

The interesting thing is how bad the vibes were from the remaining bomb crew at the departure and the lack of mass exodus after him. It seems like there's no love lost, which suggests there's something that happened but we probably won't find out for a while, if ever. The whole thing was bizarre and will always invite speculation.

Yeah the mods are slacking

There's genuinely a significant chunk of the audience who think Ryckert founded the site in 2014 or something to that effect. At the very least they'd have to be at least 30 now to properly appreciate the comparison.

That said, you're reading way too much into the reactions (or lack there of.) It's impossible not to make the comparison to 2007, but there's a very different combination of staff leaving and joining around Jeff.

They should never have tied "Jeff's leaving..." and "...HEY REBRANDING!" together the way they did of course. The only possible reason for doing so would be a sense of ripping the bandaid off and getting it all done at once.

@permanentsigh: There's nothing against speculation in our rules. If we lock and prevent threads as these people tell us we're hiding something or controlling the discussion, or censoring outside opinions we disagree with. If we leave it open we're "slacking".

@finaldasa: I was being sarcastic

While it would be interesting to, someday, know why Jeff left, it really does not bother me that he and GB have not talked about it. I do not care to speculate on why he left, although I do get a kick out of reading wild conspiracies.

However, I do think it was disappointing that there was no montage, or whatever, to celebrate Jeff's contribution to GB. I think that would have been the perfect closure to one era of GB, IMHO.

I worry that I'm too dismissive when I post about this stuff, but I can't justify getting offended on behalf of a guy I don't really know who left a company I'm not a part of under circumstances I have no real knowledge of.

Caring about shit takes time and energy, and the combined factors here don't add up to something I should be concerned about.

Maybe if/when the whole story is told it'll be just as bad for the corporate overlords as the Kayne and Lynch thing. Or maybe the truth will show Jeff in a more negative light. Or maybe it'll be one of those complicated and tragic stories that was unavoidable-- no real heroes or villains. But we currently don't know shit, and every person close to the situation has said they don't want to talk about it. So I think my best move is to shrug and go on with my life.

Interesting. When I made a thread on the circumstances of Jeff’s departure a little over a month ago it was immediately locked because you “didn’t allow speculation“. Maybe you need to have a talk in the mod team.

There is a thought that amused me occurred right now, though it also is just speculation. As @borgmaster mentions, I was there for the debacle at Gamespot. The site was as I recall, decorated with Starsky and Hutch, Kane and Lynch embroidery over the main page. I do remember somewhat the Video review of Jeff ranting and I think, waving something around. The next day his stuff was in the hallway (as I remember, could be shaky)

That whole occurrence was a magnificent springboard for his new career, co-founding GB.

I'm not putting forth anything more than a pattern. And I am not challenging the sincerity of whatever. It did surprise that most of present and prior GB did a show lately. Well, minus Jeff.

I have three Video game places I go now.

Seems to work out, as I like all three.

@dragon_puncher: We allow it, but at times it gets to be way too much or personal. So when people are speculating about someone's family or personal life, or there are multiple threads dedicated to speculation, then yes we'll happily put a stop to it.