Jeff statement on the future of the site

At last someone cognisant enough to see what's happening in front of them.

Well EITHER - Jeff, Jan, Jason and Rorie came together and crafted a statement that's wildly different in tone and message than Jeff's own. OR, and I can not stress enough how this is more likely, Some management bod at Red Ventures put out this statement of intent and signed it "Giant Bomb As a Whole" since they own GB and have license to say that. Like, it's only 4 names, if you weren't trying to obfuscate the source of the message you'd have signed it differently.

See Above.

This is so sad

I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not a good sign when you release statements strategically designed to calm people down while saying absolutely nothing like a concrete answer

This reeaally feels like 2007-era Gamespot again

@ludovicoheard: Considering the garage stream that Jeff just did reiterated that same tone and message, I'm not buying some nonsense speculation. The last thing this site has been I dishonest so I have no idea why this is being assumed as obfuscation.

Also lmao at a gamespot comparison in many ways most of all they seem to be doing pretty well.

GBeast was the thing keeping me here. GB may find great hires and a new format, but for me the site has always been so itegrated to existance of the "corecrew" that without it, its just a whole different thing. With the remaining premium I will download all the stuff I always wanted see and move to other gaming podcasts/content likely. Right now that looks like: waypoint, firescape and minnmax. I will keep an eye what will happen to this site but at same time I'm greatly more interested what Brad, Vinny and Alex are gonna do next.

Glad to hear this from Jeff & i know the site is in good hands. Curious to see what happens as the game industry (both video games and tabletop hobby board games/RPGs) are in such a golden age of prosperity in how much variety is out there that we all have a ton more games in our future to enjoy & talk about.

We are all speculating here, that's fine. It's from a position of low concern because we love this site. No one should be harangued for stating their thoughts and concerns. We all know nothing is concrete.

That being said. Take a look at Red Venture's site. read how they describe themselves.

Powered by a proprietary tech platform, Red Ventures builds personalized experiences that meet people wherever they are in their online journeys, making it easier to find information and relevant products and services for their homes, health, travel, finances, education, and entertainment. Our digital brands empower people to make confident decisions about things that matter most to them, whether it's strengthening their mental and physical health, investing, moving, higher education, traveling the world, or discovering new entertainment.

Seems to me their corporate philosophy is about buying decisions and pushing people to those products for which RV gets a small cut. This site is a business, and that is the business model of the new parent company.

But.... I have faith that if anyone can find a way to make GB interesting, and compelling within that framework, Jeff can.

@digitaldisco: Giant Bomb has never really fit in to any corporate umbrella particularly well. It's a small site with a passionate fanbase. It's possible that Red Ventures might try to monetize it through the same means it uses with other sites, or it's possible that like CBS it kind of leaves it alone as a tiny corner of their empire that throws off a little bit of money and doesn't require a ton of oversight.

I think the podcast is the true prize here for something like Red Ventures, but they already do ads on the podcast so that probably wouldn't change much. I doubt very much Jeff would stick around if they tried to force Giant Bomb to do sponsored content that affected the editorial side. Giant Bomb started because he refused to toe the line on Kane and Lynch so I very much doubt he's going to let the site do advertorial stuff under his watch.

This. Three key staff members up and leave the company (really five with Ben and Abby) without much of an explanation after an obviously unpleasant acquisition by a soulless venture capital firm that was targeting other sites with said aquisition and which has distracted them for months and obviously affected output... it's not like people don't have reason to be suspicious and the fact that they continue to be rather vague/cagey about what's going on certainly isn't helping.

Like, when the CBS acquisition happened they made a point of doing a video with the head of Gamespot that laid out exactly what happened with Kane and Lynch-gate and assured everyone that not much would change and a similar video that laid out what was happening here with similar transparency would go a LONG way. Are we "owed" this? I mean, no, not literally. But as a simple matter of inspiring consumer confidence it would go a long way.

@ludovicoheard: dude, the wild speculation you are engaging in is unhelpful and almost surely incorrect. just chill out.

@roadshell: We have no idea what's going on behind the scenes. It's possible that what happened was Red Ventures told Vinny and Alex that they wanted to consolidate to California and not rent New York office space and that pushed them out, with Brad following because the band was getting broken up. Or they just reconsidered because of the pandemic and the big change. Or a thousand other things.

I don't think Jeff is being vague or cagey about what's going on, I think he just doesn't have anything to announce yet because he's working on figuring out what form it will take. There's no point in making a big announcement when you don't have firm plans.

The truth is we don't really know anything and people are filling that void with speculation.

@cybexx: Couldn't agree more! I have been lurking in the gb atmosphere for 10 years and things have changed so so much. Saddens me that it feels like YouTube culture has killed the gb I love.

@royalghost: that's my fear. I'm assuming that the departure had to do with not liking the direction thing's were headed but we will have to wait and see. Sure will miss hearing everybody

@paul_tillich: . Been waiting for this response, I'd love to be proven wrong and Jeff knock it out of the park but clearly those 3 leaving was a sign things were not going In a direction they felt they wanted to be a part of.

It's really funny the conspiracists/speculators can't even figure out that Red Ventures isn't literally a venture capitalist group. It's just a media company.

Jeff sounds like he's having a stressful time at the moment; with his poor wife having pretty serious "morning" sickness, having to cook/eat in the shed at night, managing baby duties and a full time job during the day, having to clean out the shed in the only free time he gets at night before his new baby arrives and then GB having its core staff leave is a lot to have on your plate.

What are the chances Brad, Alex and Vinny appear on the Bombast as guests every week, like Danny? I'd think that doing the podcast as guests and not as staff would be more enjoyable for the guys.

I understand the impulse to speculate but we don't know and will likely never know the whole story. Even Dan was on twitch saying speculation is usually wrong. I'm sure he read all the bullshit speculation when he left the site, too.

Very much feeling that I'm not going to like whatever this site turns in to, but waiting is the only thing we can do.

i mean to be fair dan leaving the site how/when he did was a vey dan thing to do. he went from gi to here n here to wrestling stuff with his own side thing and that fit with his personality well which is totally different then this imo. even abby i could understand her getting out when she did for a multitude of reasons and ben wanting out of the 'spotlight' so to speak made sense. these 3 all at once tho thats something else and i can understand the reason for speculation right or wrong.

The situation by its nature is going to lead to complicated feelings and speculation. Giant Bomb as an idea and community is more than an individual moving on to do something else. There is the obvious implications of work/life balance, compensation, and wanting to do different things. When it was just Patrick, Drew, Ben, Abby, etc. setting sail, closure was easier to come by.

Where the complication sets in for the community is that Giant Bomb as an idea and community is very much defined by these founding members. As unfair as it may be to place parasocial feelings onto them, it is also the direct result of the business they built and traded in. The partially one-sided relationship is over a decade long for many and the grief, sadness and emptiness is real. Giant Bomb is part of a lifestyle for people.

So while it shouldn't be pushed on Alex, Brad or Vinny to air dirty laundry or be made to talk about their personal situation outside of a "It's been a hell of a ride, thanks and goodbye!", I hope there is an understanding that the empty feeling and lack of closure for the many people that follow this site is a real thing. We can read daily stories at the moment of community members literally crying, feeling devastated and wondering if their time with internet gaming culture is at an end. A simple goodbye without a modicum of explanation for all three leaving at once will only fuel the grief and speculation. And leaving so much room for speculation, being itself rooted in half truths at best, will perpetuate these feelings, further complicating the sites future.

This wasn't a gut punch, this was a Bald Bull Bull Charge.

I used to go many, many game sites and listen to many games podcasts, but it's been down to just GB for a bit.

The 1UP debacle is comparable in a sense because so many favorite personalities were there one week, and then just gone. I think it happened over a Christmas break, iirc. People come and go from podcasts and sites, and it's often a bummer...this, like 1UP, is soul-gutting.

And yeah, everybody leaving having 'thought about about it for a while' but not seeming to have anything else lined up is suspect. Could be the case. But all of them? At once? Come on... But whatever, irresponsible speculation.

Glad Jeff is continuing on, but I would have expected that. When Ryan passed, he had a message or tweet that was along the lines "people are asking me if it's over. No. I've been doing this my whole life, this is what I do."

I mean, frankly the fact that they "don't have anything to announce" just raises more questions. They're all presumably leaving on the same day becaus of some kind of contract expiration date, it would be a wild coincidence if that wasn't the case, they must have known that day was coming so why wait until the month after to figure out what was going to happen next? RV must know something about messaging to consumers, why didn't they free them up to make the new hires and figure out where this was going ahead of time?

I like how we're still getting "its probably some contract thing" right after a live beastcast where Vinny explicitly says it isn't/there was none.

@roadshell: Vinny has said it wasn't a contract thing and I trust him. It obviously wasn't a coincidence in the sense that they didn't all independently decide to leave on the same day without telling each other, but there are lots of ways that it could have happened this way. Maybe they had a meeting and Alex decided he didn't like the direction the site was headed and wanted to leave and then Vinny didn't want to stay on as the only member of GBEast and decided to leave and Brad was already thinking about leaving and decided to head out with his two buds. Or someone from the parent company said something really toxic in a meeting and they all quit in protest. Or they got offered buyouts because they're senior staff in a merger. We have no idea.

As for the "presumably Red Ventures would have its stuff together for new hires" you clearly have not worked at a big company before, especially in a small subsidiary. It's quite possible that they all set this date a month ago and Jeff put in a request to hire new people and it ended up in his manager's manager's inbox but that woman is too busy to sign off right now. It's super easy for this kind of stuff to get lost in the shuffle when your department is not a company priority. Or Jeff legitimately needs more time to figure out what's next and didn't want to hire a bunch of people without being sure of the site's direction.

These guys have never lied to their viewers up until now so I don't see why they'd start. But sometimes transparency would just make people angrier or more confused because nobody is actually sure what's going on. All we can do is take them at their word and show them the respect of not assuming they're trying to pull one over on us until there's some kind of evidence that they are.

I've been here from the beginning and i'll be here until the end, i'm sad that some of my favourite people are leaving but i'm also excited to see what Jeff has in mind for the future of the site. He started this whole thing off and i have to believe he has a vision for the site and for us.

There is a collective vision for what the future of Giant Bomb is and it involves both familiar and new faces. We're already in talks with creators so that we can begin the next chapter. We're fully aware that this marks a big change and we're using this as an opportunity to rethink what this site is...

While it's almost certainly wrong, this made me imagine GB becoming a more curated alternative to twitch.tv. Less wild west, less algorithmic decision making, and more on-staff streamers. But Vinny, Brad, and Alex wanted to return to their more produced and edited content.

GB seems to have the technology for streaming and between GB and GS maybe they have the reach to put a dent in the market. Solving some of twitch's problems by reducing the scale would be an interesting experiment. I think GB's archives are already a better system than twitch's vods.

Until Jeff and Jeff make whatever announcement about how they're switching things up with the site, I'm assuming something similar. I wouldn't necessarily think they're launching a platform that is competing with Twitch, but maybe they're looking to hire "creators" from places like Twitch and Youtube that are less interested in the ratrace of being independent contractors, and more interested in being part of an on-staff group that is playing the noteworthy games of the day and meeting up for a weekly Bombcast to discuss them. I assume a lot more of this would be streamed than current GB, as I assume more streaming hours per week is the big pivot as the site restructures. Hypothetically, every editorial/on-camera staff member has be a full-time streamer now, streaming every day, that sorta thing. Also these "creators" are used to selling out for #sponsored #ads, so I assume they would be fine hawking whatever referral links or whatever the fuck supports the Red Ventures business model.

I fully admit this is big time speculation from me, almost entirely based on the use of the word "creators" in the statement, and also Jeff Bakalar on the Beastcast sure has been talking about watching Twitch streamers a lot the last few months but generally avoiding saying which ones specifically.

@huser said:

I agree that Giant Bomb has been a pioneer in longform content and streaming experiments. Vinny running a realtime FMV presentation comes to mind.

But based on Jeff's comments on the podcast about questioning the need for a Website and looking at how other teams who just make Twitch and Youtube content do it differently I just imagine a lot of the GB standbys like Quick Looks are probably going away or drastically changing.

Like if you compare how every Kinda Funny video is a panel discussion where they pull in various content creators outside their organization and name things for clicks (like this week's KF Gamescast is named "Resident Evil Village Review" instead of a funny reference to discussion topics like GB does it, even though that video is more than just a review of that game). I can kind of speculate to a more drastic pivot and approach to content virality than the evolution of the various GB video features we've seen since 2008.

Maybe this is splitting hairs but it sounds like something more drastic is incoming. I'm just hopeful it works out.

@bigsocrates: I think you have a point, and that approach is probably the best way to benefit from their recent acquisition.

If anyone can make it work in a corporate framework its Jeff. After all, he already has.

And a note for everyone talking about the feeling that its all happening without much explanation, "so long and thanks for all the fish" style...

Guaranteed that all parties are under NDAs. If not also non-compete clauses. I am sure the crew would love to provide more info and context, but companies protect their interests. Severance is often tied to signing such agreements.

That doesn't mean that they have horror stories to tell. Could be perfectly boring reasons for the departures, but I imagine they aren't saying a lot because of a combination of legal requirements and not wanting to bash the site you poured you work into.

It wouldn't be very cool to trash GB's future on your way out when Jeff, Jan, and Jason are left to plot the evolution of the site.

There are never just two options. There are absolutely reasons they might group up their departure aside from "contract date" or "just wild coincidence." It could be as simple as May was always going to be the big shakeup month for Giant Bomb, whether they stayed or not. And once they had decided the 3 of them would leave but Jeff G wanted to stay and give it a shot, they figured why not all leave on the same week, have a big sendoff, and give the site a clean break to try out its big new experiment? They're not rich, but also the 3 of them are grown adults not living paycheck-to-paycheck: they can handle themselves for a while even if they don't have any new career move to announce the same week they depart Giant Bomb.

This is the goodbye week for the 3 departing staff members, and there's no immediate need to launch into the sales pitch of Giant Bomb 2.0 and cloud up all these sentimental goodbyes to the staff. It's actually a very considerate way to approach things, especially if anything about the rework of Giant Bomb ends up being controversial. Some community members are losing their minds over the uncertainty, but I really can't stress enough that I think they are handling this emotional time in a very responsible way.

We'll have to wait and see what the future of the website is, but I don't think the remaining GB staff is "waiting until the month after to figure out what was going to happen next." They clearly have some new idea of what the site will be, what the business model will be, what the game coverage will be. Evidently it's something they've been in meetings about since the Red Ventures acquisition. Whatever this new plan is, it's something that factored into the decisions made by GB staff that chose to leave and those that chose to remain; I'm sure the decision was hard for both groups.

The only uncertain part is will new hires/new site format connect with the old audience, connect with a new audience, etc.

@cybexx: I don't mind a drastic change(s) like you mentioned. In fact I welcome it, since this site, for better or worse, has been turning the same wheel over and over. What's most important is, whatever the next wave looks like, that GB maintains it's core persona on games and people. That's always been the magic sauce of the site, and I think the audience will always welcome that.

It could be anything, really. The only thing I will speculate is Covid has affected the entire gaming media industry. If there is a new business model or format, I am sure it will implemented elsewhere.

Sure, that just means they don't have something specific lined up. I don't think the free month is due to it being sprung on him (he said on his garage stream its been known for a month), with half the crew their output will be quite a bit lower.

Senior staff are a lot more expensive than junior staff. Severance is a common private equity move to try to change the financials to make the entity more attractive for another buyer.

I'm not able to listen to today's Beastcast today. For those who have listened to it, does it contain any info regarding the future of the site?

I want them to hire mostly real people and a single V Tuber.

this is 100% something Jeff would do.

I'm out. After Ryan died, the only thing keeping me listening were Vinny and Alex. With them gone, Giant Bomb is dead to me. It's sad, but that's the cycle of things. Later folks!

@funkyverb: Nothing about the future really. Vinny opened with a few statements in response to some of the speculation (in regards to them being forced out/this being some kind of contract stunt gone wrong).

Definitely worth a listen/watch when you get the time.

They definitely shouldn't have gotten rid of the studio couch but all this is a bit of an overreaction, don't you think?

I don’t understand the point of speculating all this?

1. Even if your guess is correct it literally has no impact on anything.

2. Literally time will tell. You don’t even have to wait that long. Jeff said like a month for them to “change the tires”. He even made sure folks got a sub extension.

We know GB will be different, obviously. Some will like it and some won’t. How is this thread anything but masturbatory?

You get it, my dude. Well put. Wish the "don't speculate" people could see this.

I know we're not allowed to speculate, but this thread full of speculation has been really helpful to me. It opened my eyes to the possibility of the cause and effect being the changes leading to the losses, rather than vice versa. I heard "They're leaving so we're not producing content for the next month to figure out what will change" and didn't give it any more thought. If they're leaving because of the incoming changes, that makes a lot more sense to me.

100% unironically into this idea.

Not really. It was pretty much just the entire GBE crew reminiscing about their time with the site and each other, and how weird/not great but memorible their office situation was. We also get a couple Dan asking something stupid moments regarding home renovations now that he and his wife own a house.

All you buzzards trying to pick apart every little word.

I'll refrain from it but the timing of all three going at the same time does trigger my conspiracy tingles. At some point, decisions have to get made by employers and employees.

I hope it works out.

so... no stream today?

Sorry for ask such question i know it's a dumb one :P

and yeahh i'll be supporting Jeff and the rest of the Staff for the coming months. They give me so much to me that i can't repay them in anything that i have so it's a no brainer to me leaving now.

Count on me.

This thread has turned into full speculation that I agree is both pointless and in very poor taste. None of the GB crew members need to explain their life and career choices and aspirations to us. I realize that a lot of people are hurting because of this and it seems that they are now in the anger stage of grief where they desperately need Red Ventures to be the scapegoat that ruined everything, while others are in bargaining asking how much they would need to pay extra for the guys to keep streaming, but the sooner you all get to acceptance, the better.

If this thread keeps leading to nonsense speculation this might as well get locked. Rorie has already addressed how shitty it is and honestly if people keep doing it then you're just being shitheads at this point.

@belgo: Yup. If anything, this pointless speculation bs is exactly the kind of toxic fan behavior that burned out the crew over the years imo.

Just have some trust in these people. 13 years in a job is a long time (arguably a couple of years longer with GS); lots of things changed in the industry, in their lives and in the world as a whole with the whole covid-situation and all that. These aren't the only people who are currently rethinking their lives and careers.

I hope they all find that next thing that makes them happy professionally and I'm also kinda excited about the future of the site.