Last month I got to spend what could easily be described as the best week of my life at the E3 expo. I played some great games and got to meet a ton of amazing people, but the highlight of that week was to meet some of the duders from Giant Bomb, a website full of people that I idolize.

Alex, Brad, Patrick and Vinny greeted me as a friend and put aside some minutes of their busy days to talk to me about my love for their website and the great games we’d seen at the expo, they even took some pictures with me. With no disrespect to these and the other duders at Giant Bomb, I was a little disappointed though that I didn’t get to meet Ryan Davis. I left E3 with a promise, that I was going to try my hardest to meet Ryan at PAX Prime later this year. But today I (and the rest of the world) got the sad news that Ryan had passed away last week, and I was shaken to my core.

Giant Bomb has been a center of my life since 2009, I’ve watched every video, some of them several times and the first thing I’ve done every wednesday these last four years is to download the Bombcast, eager to hear Ryan’s classic intro “Hey everyone, it’s tuesday” and then listen to the guys talk about video games and tell crazy stories from their lives. This is what makes Giant Bomb special. The staff always shares personal stuff about themselves, and this has created a tightly knitted community that regards the staff as close friends.

Since my first encounter with Ryan I liked him. He was funny and knowledgable, and his sense of humor seemed to be pretty close to mine. He always seemed so happy, full of joy and mischief. Watching videos that Ryan took part in was always a pleasure, he was always able to create good commentary and come up with hilarious jokes for every moment. Listing my favorite moments would take forever, but everything containing Harmonix and/or Double Fine is up there.

My thoughts go out to his friends and family, the way I feel right now I can’t even imagine how you feel.

I never got to meet you Ryan, but you always felt like a close friend of mine.

Rest in peace.