Hey folks, and welcome to the inaugural issue of what I guess we’ll call the Rorie Roundup for those of you who have some serious time in the GameSpot / Giant Bomb ecosystem. This is intended to be a weekly recap of what’s happening behind the scenes (and sometimes in front of the scenes!) here at Giant Bomb. I chose the picture above because I have been playing a lot of Returnal, which may become a relevant factoid to the Giant Bomb homepage if I finish up something that I'm working on.
The Happenings
Store Stuff: It’s taken us a while longer than I anticipated to relaunch the store, but as of last week we have finally signed a contract with a new store provider. There are a lot of odds and ends to clean up when you find a new business partner like this: closing out old invoices, shipping our merch from the old warehouse to the new warehouse, learning new tools for the backend, etc. etc. You shouldn’t need to worry too much about the specifics but I am very hopeful that the new store will be online by the end of next week. We most likely will not launch with every single legacy item (it’s going to take a bit to get samples of outerwear, drinkware, etc.) but I’m hoping to have all seven of the shirts we launched last summer ready to go when it does go live, and maybe some extra surprises as well? Maybe?
I know the store has been offline for a while now, and some of your store coupons may have expired in the interim: if there’s any issue with your order when you place it or if there’s any trouble applying your Premium 10% off, feel free to reach out to support@giantbomb.com and I’ll get you sorted. This might take some time as there’ll be some manual work for me to adjust your orders, but we’ll figure it all out in the end!
Extra Life Prizes and Thank You Cards: No, I didn’t forget that there’s a pile of stuff I have to send out as Extra Life prizes! Anyone who donated a total of $100 or more during our Extra Life stream from the SF studio in November is in the drawing pile: you should receive an email this week asking for your address. You’ll ALL get a signed thank you card if you wish for one, and I’ll get the prizes sorted out and shipped off when I get a minute. I’m a bit behind on shipping this stuff and some of the Premium Giveaway items from the Discord channel, mostly because I haven’t been going into the office due to all this rain we’ve been having in the bay.
Luckily the Fandom office in SF is literally above a USPS office so once I get everything over there (once the rain clears up) I can write all these cards and try to ship the prizes out when I select winners. I tried to do some of the Discord prizes through FedEx Pack and Ship but the prices can be EXORBITANT (think 220 dollars+ for a shipment to Canada that weighed under three pounds). I can only expense so much money!
Signup/Payment Flow: We have been working on a modernized signup and payment flow for Giant Bomb for QUITE SOME TIME NOW and it is almost ready to roll out. Sometime this week (barring any last-minute oopsies), you should find it a bit easier to either sign up for a new account or sign up for some more of that sweet, sweet Giant Bomb Premium. It should be a slicker and easier-to-use signup flow, and hopefully will make it a bit simpler to sign up for an account on your phone if you want. The work done here will build into our work on the tiered system of Giant Bomb Premium which is still on the product docket. For the crazy among you who come to this site but have never made an account - today is your day. Sneak preview image ahoy!
Returning Shows
JeffJeff’s Bizarre Adventure: We’ve seen your questions! Yes, JJBA will return this week on the 18th. We apologize for the inconsistent schedule but sometimes it’s difficult to get four very busy people in the same “room” at the same time!
Demo Derby: As Dan mentioned, he is in possession of the sacred discs and Demo Derby should return soon!
Friday Night Forkin': It returns this Thursday! Tune in!
Big Bugs
Video Player Bugs: We are still working on narrowing down the reason that some browsers are unable to play videos on the site player. Some of the issues were resolved last week but I know there are still some pain points for some of you and we’re trying to figure it out! If you’re having issues playing videos on-site please hop into this forum thread and help me narrow down the symptoms.
Or you can pop into the site-tech-issues channel on our Discord, as well.
Community Co-Op Corner
This week’s Community Co-Op Corner is going to bring me back to the world of FFXIV. I have not played a huge amount of FFXIV in the last few months, so maybe it’s time to get to a point where I can polish off Shadowbringers? (I know, I know: I am way behind but I just wasn’t feeling it for a while there.)
Join me on Wednesday at 4 PM Pacific for a jaunt through the Extinguishing The Last Light quest in Shadowbringers. I thought this was a Raid, but it turns out it’s a dungeon! It sounds like an important one, though. We’ll get through it together, watch some cutscenes, and maybe chitchat in our Discord voice channel about all things FFXIV if you want to join. Pop into the Community Co-Op Corner channel on the Discord if you want to join the party!
Premium Giveaway
That's right, it's a giveaway! I've been inconsistent with the Premium Discord giveaways in the last few months, but I am going to try and get them started up on a weekly basis in 2023. Our first giveaway of the new year is this lovely God Eater 2 Hoodie! It's real comfortable!
Here's how to enter if you're Premium:
- Join the Discord: discord.gg/giantbomb
- Go to the #bot-linkdump channel under the Off-Topic header
- Type /premium connect
- Follow the instructions provided to link up to your Premium account on-site.
- (This step is probably easiest in a web browser!)
- Click Verify and you’re good to go!
- Head to the Giveaway channel and use the bot to enter!
That is all the news I have for you this week. Feel free to use the comments to ask me for more details or about anything else you like! I will work on formatting this for easier reading in the future.
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