Countdown clock on twitch is disrespectful and tasteless.

The countdown doesn't bother me. It makes me curious as to how the remaining staff is going to sell GB still being worth the support with the entire OG cast gone.

I don't understand this feeling of being violated by a timer. People are so weird.

I think the timing (no pun intended) of having a countdown clock whilst announcing the founder of the site leaving is very poor.

@peterab: The co-founder of a site for 14 years wasn't given a send off as with all previous staff members. That's odd, and weird so people are going to question and speculate what happened.

Being upset is fine.

Chidish anger isn't. There are a lot of folks demanding WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BLOG Post.... For what? To harass that person? Take a breath and get a hold of yourselves.

1. Chill out.

2. You don't seem to get it at all

@marino: Thanks for clearing this up. In that case I don't need to reorganize my plans for tonight.

This site is dead and buried. Anyone saying "just wait and see" works here. My only regret is I just renewed my premium sub for the year in April.

Guess I have 10 months to download all the old stuff. Assuming it doesn't completely fail and get deleted before then.

I'm not wanting to rain on any parades, but I think I agree, I can't imagine Giant Bomb as a brand having much meaning when passed on. It was just a delivery method for the original crew.

The things that Giant Bomb did that were somewhat unique at the time with the video heavy content/quick looks and personality driven content, these have all become entirely the norm over the last decade.

It's such a massive shame there were so many problems and schisms along the way with GB. I regret not appreciating it more at the time. I hope Jeff winds up doing something interesting, honestly as much as I liked all the dudes GB was always at his best when he was involved.

Giant Bomb as we knew and loved it is now gone.

Premium cancelled, end of an era.

So long duders, see you on the other side.

Ya'll are weird hahaha. I've been with Giant Bomb since it was called Arrow Pointing Down. The countdown is whatever. People come and leave, that's the nature of life. I enjoy Jeff's perspective on video games but he's not our prisoner, let the man go where he pleases. Same as it was with GB East, I followed the people not the name. Yes, it won't be the same but so what.

Behold the most common takes this forum seems to trade in.

1. Person leaves. People are upset, like an dad's left them for a pack of smokes.
2. Wild speculation on new hires.
3. Moaning about the quality of premium content. Or lack of.
4. Appreciation threads for new or current hires.
5. Disappointment threads aimed at new hires.

Get a grip. Act like adults. The things you like aren't that important. It's just stuff.

Folk really going off the deep end on this huh? No-one made any of you arbiter of what is/isn't GB and I think it's pretty damn shitty to pretend like Jeff was the only person building GB all this time. Fine to have your favourite but he never did any of this alone, now you want to tear down what he started? People leave jobs, it's not a big deal.

@shindig: 6. Hot "well actually" takes where people try to invalidate criticism because they don't mind having a website that used to be on the cutting edge of the format change ownership, lose all founding members, and lower program quality/output.

Too many people are trying to scold people for not reacting to what’s happening in a way they deem appropriate. Be an adult. This is all raw and new and people are processing. Let them be upset.

As far as the timer:

The first thing you do after a big change like this sets the tone for what people expect. A giant timer is what you do before a big PR push. Giant Bomb has always been a place to escape marketing BS and hear how the staff really felt. People are right to get a bad feeling about this because whoever is making these decisions isn’t equipped to maintain the integrity and respect that Giant Bomb has cultivated. And a timer to hype up the loss of the beloved founding member and last original is a strong indicator of that.

It’s just weird tbh, If Jeff didnt say on twitter ahead of time he’s leaving the feeling would probably be different

But yea, im just kinda speechless, i feel bad for the crew thats still there, but yea,

Next proper pax is gonna be part weird and part awesome, as the giant bomb panel probably wont be the draw anymore, but there’s gonna be numerous splinter shows to catch now

It's definitely odd for sure....counting down to big news like we should be getting hyped when we are all processing Jeff leaving ... Maybe should have left the dust to settle for a day or so. It's not like this site has an modicum of transparency as it is anyway.

Reading all these threads and comments around Jeff leaving once again reminds me, why i generally don’t want to interact much on forums or social media.

It slightly baffles me, how difficult it seems to be for some people to adapt to change, or how odd some of these parasocial relationships people develop over the years can be.

Jeff G’s involvement with content produced by GB in the past six months to a year has honestly been so sporadic, that i personally have kinda gotten used to him not being around All the time. And with small kids to take care of, i’m sure his daily routine is busy as is, so i can’t fault him for distancing himself from GB.

I’ll wait until the video announcement to see where the site is headed, what are the plans regarding premium and especially who the new hires are. If the changes and new content end up not being for me, then i’ll just move on. No need to make such a giant fuss about it.

Also: i find it kinda rude towards the remaining staff (and new hires) to declare that the site is now dead in the water, before they’re given any chance to prove themselves.

@koshky: I feel exactly the same. Honestly this has been the least surprising news. I am less surprised than when A+V+B left. There's some insane levels of hysteria going on. People definitely are entitled to be upset and people process that in different ways... But its hard to reconcile that with the fact that most users of this site are grown men with the way some of them are behaving.

Oh wow, the rage in these threads are so unlike the normal GB style. And it's always at a peak when someone is leaving. "GB is dead!!" "I'm cancelling my sub!!!" "I'll never come back!!!"

Of course, you do you if you want to unsub. If you think the site is not for you anymore, don't come.

I know the site means a lot to so many people, including me, and the news of Jeff leaving hit really hard for me as well. I've been here since 2008, skulking around the forums, listening to the bombcasts, watching videos, (Subbed member since 2010 up till last years, due to a change in my economic situation, might still sub back up if the budget allows.) And yeah, it's gonna be different without Jeff, but it's not the first time one of the crew has left.

Yeah, it hits harder, because he's an "O.G" and the founder of the site a lot of us has loved for so many years, but why declare the site unusable because of this? Yeah, the timer was maybe not the best way to handle this announcement, but getting this angry about it is ridiculous.

@cloudleet: There is a path that is between blindly eating up whatever is served and just leaving. Feedback from the audience about why they are unhappy is actually constructive. They could have done better and in the past they have shown that they can. Also, yeah, they have had people leave before, but not the guy who started the whole thing after getting fired from his last job. He is the last of the duders and he got one paragraph in the post about him leaving. The dance beats and the countdown are doing nothing to make this feel better.

A countdown to goodbye. I hold no ill will, but this is no lomger Giant Bomb. Change the name of the site. Goodbye.

Don't worry, we are going to get Reel Layers season 2!

@rich666: I kinda agree. I would feel better if they just called the site GameSpot now that nobody who founded GB or built the reputation over the decade and a half are around anymore. It feels inauthentic, like Atari or Coleco, where people use a known name, but don't do what the original company was known for. Besides, if the content is good, it should hold up no matter what it's called. Using the GB name from here on out is going to be unfortunate.

some of yall are acting like the dude literally died. god this community creeps me out sometimes.

@trilogy: A month ago the "State of Premium" thread felt warranted and normal. The last few pages of it and this thread are demented. Its fine that some people identify specifically with Jeff G rather than the brand name he built but "Change the name now that Jeff left! GiantBomb is dead now!" is exactly the same stuff you see out of freaks that cry about Star Wars and Disney and whatever else. Get a life, jesus.

It wasn't Cody Rhodes, but Dan Ryckert is a close second.

Welp, eating my words on this one.

I'll follow Dan Ryckert to the ends of the earth.

Well, this thread aged super well and doesn't read like "The Dangers of Parasocial Relationships - A Thread" at all...

While it's interesting that Grubb and Dan are back and they addressed some problems (lack of content, lack of gaming focused content) and Dan + Jeff will both have large studios to do dumb stuff in, which might alleviate some of the issues people have with the webcam era. That said, I still think it was kinda strange to have party jams and a countdown starting on the day that the last founder of the site left. For all the responses about current staff being attacked, I have found that a majority of critical posts were presenting valid issues and feelings. Constructive criticism from the community is a good thing.

I like Dan Ryckert. I loved Metal Gear Scanlon. I have a signed copy of Air Force Gator 2 with his Homer Simpson drawing in it. This is good news.

If some of y'all need time to grieve then maybe it's on you to turn off the internet and not come back until you're done with whatever process you need to get through. Shit is ridiculous.

People need to get some fresh air

Yeah, after watching Gerstmann's stream, there is no way his departure was voluntary. Those leaving jobs through an orderly, respectful parting don't cobble together a Patreon the morning after their hastily-announced last day on their job while they're so choked up they can barely speak. I'm sure those who gleefully threw the founder of the site and a father of two young kids out on his ear are supremely proud of themselves, and that'd be the worst of it, if not for all the rest of it. I'm disgusted by the behavior of those still with the site in this turn of events, and I'm glad I have better people in gaming media to support.

I don't think the announcement needed an entire 12 hours worth of a countdown, but I was thoroughly entertained and assuaged by the announcement of permanent staffing as to the future of Giant Bomb. Gerstmann departing is a huge bummer (and so far it doesn't look like we're getting a clear explanation from him as to why) but independent of that, Grubb and Dan are basically the best options to pick up the slack for the void Gerstmann left behind (industry expertise and content creation). It was an extremely important announcement to make that clearly had a lot of work put into it and needed to make sure it got as many eyes on it as soon as possible.

I think the timing and ongoing lack of information prior to the Bombcast is still awkward as hell and part of me suspects that we might never learn the proper reason why Jeff left, but people projecting "disrespect" for Gerstmann need to seriously check their parasocial relationship with the personalities on this website.

I think a ton of people in this thread (and elsewhere, like Twitter) are wanting something to be "clear" when that might literally be impossible. You want a reason, some specific thing to point to and say, "Aha, THIS is why X happened," but life just doesn't always work that way.

I have watched many, many people leave a job with no reason other than, "It was time for something new," which seems to be more or less what Jeff has said about his departure. That's it. There's no hidden message there, no secret "Well, but actually it was X Y and Z." It's just as simple as was stated: They wanted to do something new.

Jeff has been with Giant Bomb for 14 years, and he's been doing "corporate games journalism" for far longer than that. He's stood tall (literally and figuratively) in an industry that most people jump ship from far quicker than that. Many of his peers have moved on or even retired at this point. He also has two small children at home, which, lemme tell you, can be exhausting.

Trying to speak on other people's behalf when you don't even know them is gross. And yes, I know that it probably feels like you know Jeff because you've spent years with his voice in your ears and his face on your screens, but that's not the same thing.

@hibbitybibbard: Constructive criticism is great. Now let's just hope the community starts giving it at some point.

Dan being back is potentially good news. He seems full of ideas which, even in the restricted confines of twitch streaming, he managed to cobble together.

As for his reasons for departure, Jeff doesn't have to disclose them. Maybe he's not liked the way the pandemic has impacted how things are done. He's also in a very different place in his life with two kids that ultimately take up a lot of time. He's ran this show for almost 15 years and lifers in this industry are an increasingly rare breed.

@indigozeal: Jeff, is that you!?

Because otherwise I can see no reason why you would post this other than just offering a PSA of, again, now in a new thread, parasocial relationships are bad and creepy as shit.

On Jeff's Patreon blurb (doing pretty well already btw) he specifically mentions:

'I believe in this work, now more than ever. Especially the podcast end of things. The problem is that doing a lot of this work for someone else means that a chunk of your behind-the-scenes time is taken up with meetings and staring at traffic numbers and various types of hand-wringing. This aspect of the business seems like it's only getting worse as the years go on. So it's time for me to do something about that and reclaim that time for more useful endeavors. It's time for me to pull a Mario Van Peebles. It's time for me to go solo.'

That's not all there is but I don't think it's missing context and hopefully might settle down some of the more presumptuous conspiracy shit being bandied around lately. Seems fair, understandable and un-forced to me.

EDIT: Just wanted to add that I get people being upset about the news and I'm definitely not trying to diminish how people grieve about it. I just hope that we can learn to not jump to such outrageous conclusions right off the bat without any actual evidence, that shit helps no-one.

This forum post is far more so.

Let people have privacy. We aren't owed the explanation you expect, and running off with bad-faith assumptions disrespects the both the GB crew and Jeff. Stop making it weird, calm down, and see what happens before making things worse.

I would be the absolute last person to jump to the kind of conspiracy theories that people have been bandying about because most of them are so absurd and outlandish they read like absolute nonsense. My point is that Jeff's exit was the most unceremonious of the lot even by the standards of previous departures, with nary an announcement from the horse's mouth on the website. The fact that readers weren't able to suss out the probable motivation until Gerstmann's self-employment Patreon was brought up the day after his departure is the reason we got the unhinged reactions from people like OP. So I think compared to things like the breakup of GBE (who were very clear before their exit that they were Pretty Tired Of All This), the optics of this probably could have been managed better.

Otherwise, I think we're just agreeing past each other on the issue

It's clear that creative differences caused this to happen. I'm glad Jeff is still doing his thing and starting his own podcast. I'll follow it. As far as GB?, while I do like some of the personalities, I don't like the cold corporate new coat of paint that the website has become. I'll still pay attention to what is going on, but no chance I'll be getting premium again.

Edit: Now that Jeff is a "free agent" as he calls himself, hopefully he can now do things with the Nextlander, Waypoint, G4 and other popular guys in the gaming industry.

@bludgeonparagon: Yeah, sorry, I actually should have prefaced my post to say that most of it wasn't directed at you. You just happened to have a good jumping off point in what you said.

I do think (hope?) that a lot of the rampant and unhealthy speculation is starting to die down as the dust is settling.

@efesell: maybe to you but it's not fair for you to dictate how one feels or what they feel is wrong.