Jess and Jason have been laid off (Updated)

Yeah I finally canceled my Premium after more than a decade. Firing two of the three video producers for a site that makes video content is just asinine. Best of Luck to Jason and Jess and I hope to see you in a better place doing what you want.

@bigsocrates: You're right that just sitting and accepting changes that you don't like isn't a wise way to make change, but what @apewins said is also 100% correct -- you can't cancel your service and expect things to get better.

If you want to support the current staff, then listen to what they say. Grubb said this morning to give them some time. Otherwise, if you want to jump ship, then that's totally understandable. But you can't cancel and expect it to get better.

So much for all that goodwill the Bombathon raised, having said that I'm staying on the ship til the bitter end.

Just keep handing them money with a smile and one day my smile will touch their hearts and they'll make everything good again.

@bigsocrates: I just want people to understand the ramifications of their actions so they won't end up regretting them. This isn't Microsoft we're talking about and Giant Bomb isn't some big money maker for them. They're not going to come back saying "oops, looks like we made a mistake, we're going to re-hire all the people you like based on your feedback". The next very likely won't be more layoffs, it will be a full closure of the site. They can do that without a second though and no shareholder is even going to notice, and in many ways it is a miracle that hasn't already happened, which goes to show that there is at least somebody who still sees potential in this site.

And if a full closure is what you're voting for with your wallet then I don't want to see anyone come back complaining "can you believe those bastards killed Giant Bomb and now Jan and everyone else is unemployed too". Your $5 a month doesn't have as much negotiating power as some people seem to might think.

@efesell: It's $5 a month. I feel like that's a small price to pay for an admittedly unlikely resurgence of the site, and as it stands I see no evidence that the service, even after these layoffs, isn't worth it. Because as I said above, the alternative for me is worse. This isn't the type of money that I'm going to end up regretting losing either way.

i mean its hard to say your wrong cause frankly i don't think your wrong , but i also think its sorta wrong to give money to a company that you don't trust to do with it the original intent either i guess. its a damn shame honestly cause the remaining staff are great n this is going to effect them too. personally i stopped paying for premium with the piviot to everything being free n it just being discord n store benefits , n the store benefits went down the drain thanks to that bad supplier ( i have my fucked up temple shirt to prove it) so really whats the insentive anyway at this point as a thing you pay for when something like this happens. like others have said the others n then guys leaving n jeff G getting fired was a bit different as they were leaving on their own terms with jeff G being the outlier who would have still left just a few weeks after if according to his plan, this is different in it being just a cut cause corporate bs. its sad honestly , say what you will about CBS clearly they were a headache to work for but it seems like of these owners they were at least hands off enough to be the best sadly of coruse thats just my perspective as an outsider

Has this been addressed by any of the remaining staff in a stream? Has there been any official communication by the site ?

it seems like effing Fandom only wanted the wiki in the first plac.

@apewins: So my $5 a month is not powerful enough to get them to keep people employed but is powerful enough to bring the whole site down. Funny how that works.

We have no idea what the actual economics of Giant Bomb are. We've gotten dribs and drabs over the years but we just don't know. Maybe if some percentage of people quit they will just shutter the site, maybe they won't. Maybe they will anyway even if everyone keeps subscribing because engagement is down so far. We just do not know. We don't even know why this happened. Was it because Giant Bomb is making less money? Merger costs? Just a blunt companywide cut? No clue.

Do I want Giantbomb to fail and be shuttered? Of course not. But I'm not just going to throw money at the site and its new seemingly not nice overlords in the hope that it trickles down to the people I want to support when they're flat out laying off people with no explanation. I'm just not that desperate. Part of Giant Bomb's appeal was always that it seemed like a great place to work run by people who cared about the staff. Now that's gone. There are lots of great content producers out there. Giant Bomb has been a special place but this hurts that specialness. Of course I'm willing to listen to whatever the company/staff has to say and maybe re-evaluate based on that, but to just chuck money at Fandom in the hopes that things just get better? My $5 a month may not mean much but I want it to mean more than that.

This double-extra sucks because the site's been so good lately. I was ready to wrap it all up when Jeff G left but nuGB has been making perhaps their most fun stuff since pre-pandemic times. It's a crew built to work in the streaming era, and with some incredible chemistry. But a change-up like that needs time to bring people on board, and they haven't given it that. Even if they'd fully transitioned to a Twitch or YT focus, I'd have been fine with that. Now... I don't know at all.

@apewins: You are, intentionally or not, just advocating a sort of guilt trip payment to fandom to try and make sure the rest of the staff stays employed. Just... "oh these layoffs are sad but just wait until you see what happens if you cancel!"

It's wild.

So Jess and Jason and the other practices so far doesn't matter. Just keep paying that 5 bucks and hope Fandom will gain a conscience. Sorry to pile on dude, but that's not a good look. And spoiler alert: They won't grow a conscience, and those other layoffs will likely happen anyway.

Frankly, based on the responses on all of these threads that have popped up, I don't expect that level of introspection from many users here.

grubb talked about it a little bit the start of the Game Mess this morning. best you can hope for is some commentary on the bombcast, but even then i wouldn't surprised if things remain quiet since none of this is their decision, and if current staff want to hold on to benefits and salary they can't be too vocal without repercussions. so expectations should be set appropriately.

you're not going to get an official word from Fandom because that's not how parent companies work- it'd be nice if they consulted their customers before staffing changes happen, but i've never seen that happen. we're not shareholders or investors.

anyway- no judgement from me in either direction for paying customers- either the product is worth it to you or not, so do what feels right. pay for what you're getting now- not a promise in the future. but this really underscores that content is not guaranteed- it's always something of a leap of faith, even moreso when there's a corporate overlord involved.

We've had a few different threads over the past months regarding the downward trend in quality, and lost some very big personalities. If subs are down it can hardly be a surprise.

I 100% understand people unsubscribing and stepping away from GB. I hate the recent layoffs and the slow attrition of staff members who made this site what it is. At this point the loss of staff is beyond alarming and I don't know how the remaining folks are going to handle their increased workloads. The site was finally clicking and now two rocks of the site are gone for seemingly no reason. Furthermore, the health care ramifications for Jason are fucking despicable and he needs whatever support we can muster.

All that being said, I'm staying here until the end. At this point I've been a GB community member for over half of my life. This site and its community have been rocks in my day to day existence in ways small and large. I've spent too much time trying to make this community and site a fun and welcoming place. I can't step away from all that. It's too special and too precious to me. All of you are.

@bigsocrates: Are you really going to act like you don't see any connection to hundreds of people canceling their subscriptions after Gerstmann was let go (and Vinny/Brad/Alex before that), the ongoing economic crisis affecting basically the whole world, and this announcement?

Bottom line is absolutely no company has it's top priority in keeping people employed. Harsh as it may sound but I don't subscribe to this site so that its employees can put food on the table, I do it because they provide entertainment that I like. If Fandom believes that these cuts work towards that goal then I'm willing to give them a chance to prove it. Again, not that I have a whole lot of confidence in that.

@efesell said:

Isn't the employment of 2 members exactly what this thread is all about? It's weird that everyone cares about them but seemingly nobody cares about the remaining staff. I'm not trying to guilt trip anyone. What I see here, same as the previous restructurings, is a lot of people having a knee-jerk reaction to a thing that they care deeply about, without necessarily thinking about the bigger picture.

What's also weird is this assumption that all your subscription money is apparently going to Fandom alone and the entire Giant Bomb crew has been working for free all this time since Fandom doesn't pay them?

I held off on saying anything in this thread, but you've put this very well and I want to echo everything you've said.

The staff loss previously, and these new layoffs, have been a tough adjustment, but recently the GB staff was really finding a new rhythm. My understanding was Jess especially was hired to help with video production work since the workload last year was too much to manage for Jan and Jason. To suddenly lose Jason and Jess, I don't understand how Jan can be expected to single-handedly manage all video production while also being one of the central on-camera staff as well.

I wish all the best for Jess and Jason, and hopefully their considerable talent finds them in new games industry jobs soon.

@apewins: The way that corporate revenue and earnings translate to employee compensation is not nearly as linear as you seem to think it is. Did you know that corporate profits surged during the pandemic, the so-called economic crisis you were talking about? Corporations frequently cut staff when they are perfectly profitable or even during record profits. These layoffs didn't just hit Giant Bomb they also hit Gamespot and other parts of Fandom so there's no reason to think they are directly linked to subscription levels.

Your understanding of how corporate economics work is just wrong. Yes it's true that if Giant Bomb becomes unprofitable they will probably shut it down. But they might shut it down anyway. Or maybe it is already super profitable but the layoffs were based on overall company earnings or just a desire to cut back staffing and the mandate was cut from every department. There is no one to one connection between subscriptions and layoffs at this point. And part of Giant Bomb's subscription pitch was always a form of crowdfunding. For all we know now the subscription dollars are being spent on stock buybacks or the CEO's corporate perks and our favorite personalities are getting fired because someone in the C-Suite decided it was time to "cut some fat" and every department got hit.

that frankly is my biggest worry , jan already seemed overworked with him n jason pre-jess , reading his 2021 goty write up i could only imagine how much of that stress we didn't see even if we seen plenty of it . my only assumption is someone from the gs side of things might be helping with the workload or equaly likely we see dimished content from here out cause how can you expect 1 person to do 3 jobs , and i can't imagine there was a raise involved when your cutting jobs... if it was me i'd probably try n line something up ( if even) n walk either way . this place had felt like a sinking ship for a while and over the last few months it felt like they finally patched some of the holes up only for this to spring a big leak , its super depressing as a fan but i can only imagine the feeling for the staff.

Big time speculation on my entire post that follows:

I think the subscription money is sort of going to Fandom alone. I don't imagine the sub money just funnels into some GB operating budget account where GB merely has to pay their "be a part of Fandom" dues each month. Likely not how it works. The GB revenue (from subs, merch store, etc.) likely goes straight to Fandom accounting/finance, and is sorta independent of GB's budget/salaries.

I'm sure if the revenue super plummeted then GB's owner at the time (CBSi, RV, Fandom) would consider laying people off or shuttering GB. But my point is, if subs got super boosted, it likely doesn't immediately raise GB's salaries or budgets either. The owner is just like "sweet, more money in our accounts." I imagine GB specifically requests salary/budget increases and points to the boosted revenue they are providing, if sub numbers were to dramatically increase.

In the case of these layoffs, either case seems like a moot point. It doesn't seem like GB revenue affected these layoffs, though maybe if GB subs/revenue were stratospherically high it could've shielded them from layoffs. It seems like these layoffs weren't about GB's revenue in particular, so much as Fandom looking at their big-picture finances for every division/unit, and saying "hey dipshits, we're cutting operating expenses by 10% or whatever, so to make those numbers work we're laying off X staff members across multiple teams, we don't care how good or bad you're doing, these are the teams where layoffs are happening." I don't think GB subs/revenue directly were involved here, based on some of the articles I saw. GB, Gamespot, etc. just had to let go a certain amount of staff to "balance the books" on a high level for Fandom overall, regardless of how well or not well their team is doing.

Anyway, if a bunch of people angrily unsub as this thread indicates, it's just going to further lower the odds of GB being able to request more staff or more budget. Angrily unsubbing likely won't send a message to any Fandom middle manager to undo the Jason/Jess layoffs. The Fandom managers likely don't know/don't care, and it'll just look like worse GB revenue on some spreadsheet next financial quarter.

@bisonhero: The flip side is that if you lay a bunch of people off and revenue does not drop that sends the message that it was the right call and can, in fact, help inspire future layoffs to "cut the fat."

There's no great move as a consumer to directly support the material you like except to only sub to small creators or companies that directly get the money. People need to figure out what they want to do and do it. At least if you're noisy on the way out then whoever is pitching for more budget can point to that feedback to the middle manager and say "yeah we lost revenue but look, the cuts did a lot of damage to our customer support." Will that work? Sometimes yes sometimes no. Generally no.

There's no ideal move here. It all just sucks. And it sucks most for Jess and Jason.

I was going to dispute this but, at least in Jeff Gerstmann's case, he stuck around longer than he intended to. I just feel the structure of office working and studio space would lead to better content. Not just in production quality but in the flow of ideas.

Remote working is a compromise.

All the best to Jess and Jason and the talent still employed with Giant Bomb, Gamespot and Fandom as a whole. I was warming back up to the site after a change in my own content consumption tastes and

Jess was a delightful addition to the team as both an on-camera and off camera talent. I have no doubt she’ll continue to find creative outlet and opportunity.

Jason always came off as very knowledge and professional in editing and production. I still tie my cables up the same as him ever since the video on it! I hope he finds opportunity to put those skills to the test in new ways.

It’s best to try and be optimistic in how to navigate a crap deal but I think the message can be “we’re starting a new chapter” or “we’re in transition” so many times before you start wondering if anyone still thinks its a job they still want to do.

As someone that works in corporate accounting, I would guess that Giant Bomb is just another division/department/whatever dimensions they use. Someone in my position probably pulled the numbers from an ERP, set up a report, filtered on the Giant Bomb portion (more likely a level above even that), and management looked at it. They looked at the budget to actuals, asked a couple of questions, and went "ok, we forecast this percentage change in 2023." And then the changes are in motion.

It really is cold, hard numbers in business. Analyzing the numbers is a detached process. Frankly, I have access to detailed payroll but it all goes into a bucket and there are no names attached. If I run a report, it's another line on the ledger when I'm in a meeting, there is no "Did this person meet their performance review goals? Can I watch a video they made? How's their attendance?" Once the decision is made to hire or fire, it's someone else's jobs to carry out that task.

Financials are a guide to management, and a lot of managers prefer simplified presentations. I'm doing a year end report now and the notes section for a line is usually one or two summary sentences to kickstart a conversation. So it's gone through a ton of filters before the decision makers even see it. I'm just trying to provide some context into how financials are used and presented in business.

And with that, the last fighting game scientist is gone..... I hope he keeps his labcoat and goes on to do more research. I would love to follow him.

Love you Jason! You were the best og gb member on the site.

UPF is cancelled today for anyone that didn't already know.

@csl316: thats super shitty and insightful at the same time ( nothing against you a job is a job ) i don't find this suprising at all and i would be equally unsuprised if that was also how things here were handled , granted there was nobody that it would have made sense to cut on this team specially with how small it was/is , but 2 video ppl out of 3 for a video sight ....yeah it makes sense that the numbers could work the same way.

I hope anyone left at the company have an escape plan by now because it's never a good sign to do layoffs like that (especially if it hits on-air employees usually....) Wishing all the best to everyone hit by that or left to hold the fort, sucks big time but I don't see how to get back up after this especially the morale of the team and the also implied impossible short term expansion or growth content wise.....

If something happens to Jason, Perkins Miller will have blood on his hands.

I'm not sure what to do with my subscription anymore. I renewed after the update primarily to support the site since I have no interest in Discord stuff. Now, though, it's clear that subscriptions aren't enough to sustain the talent and content I enjoy here. It's probably time to give it up and let it go.

Euthanizing the site would at least end the staff having to live and work under a constant cloud of anxiety and uncertainty. The sooner they can move on with their lives the better.

@csl316 said:

I would clarify though that It does depend on the size of the business and the culture of the workplace. Like, if you have thousands of employees you don't have much of a choice -- but with a couple hundred people, it should still be possible to keep a "human" element to the business planning. Our company can do it at any rate. And Fandom (if you believe Wikipedia) isn't that much larger than we are.

The thing is, since I'm not in meetings with the Board, I usually have no idea if we're looking to staff up or have layoffs. We've been in both positions over the years but my job is to just report the numbers.

Here's an example of how many levels buying some laptops can go through, as a standard budget item:

- Marketing hires a sales rep that needs a new laptop.

- IT says we need laptops.

- Staff accountant prepared a budget in late 2022, with one laptop as part of thousands of other expenses.

- Accounting manager finalized the budget.

- VP presents the budget.

- CFO approves the budget.

- Board decides we should execute the budget. These are the final decision makers that will never think about that specific laptop.

This is a simple example, but gives you an idea of how numbers get lost in the shuffle as you move through levels. And how at any point, the budget can get moved back a step and reappraised. It's just the way it works. And a company like Fandom surely has a way more complicated process than that.

With people, it's obviously more in depth. But the last step, that the Board will never think about that specific person, that's where the decision is made. Then it goes back down the chain to get rid of two out of three video producers on a video-based website.

I'm getting off the point of this thread, that Jason and Jess are fantastic and I hope they can land on their feet sooner than later. Two of my favorites on the staff. I don't watch every GB video, but I would never miss a video with either of them on it.

Huge loss. finally decided to cancel my subscription after all these years. Jason as been a rock and Jess was the best thing to happen to the site in ages.

It shows how bad the loss was for the team for them to cancel making content 2 days in a row. They are clearly devastated too

I can only clarify my logic as someone who has been here since I helped beta test the site as to why I hit cancel. As I stated before, I am subbed for the full year and I don't intend to stop watching and engaging with the content. For me it was more of a hopeful message sending because corporate won't see forums. They won't see twitter. They only see charts. People are angry and that metric shows it. How they respond to that we don't know and won't for some time.

When the old crew left I stayed on and never wavered my sub for the exact same logic others are stating. I kept it going for the support of the remaining staff, new and old. This one hit me different since this is the ownership side directly saying those support numbers are not enough and/or don't matter already. In all likelihood, knowing myself and how much I love this damn site and have for it's entire existence, I will probably end up reupping coming the end of the year if things are still running as we all hope they will, but I felt like this one needed to be handled differently just to at least affect something that the ownership would see to know how much we all think this situation is garbage.

Is there a risk that they see the numbers drop and wash their hands of it? Yeah, there is. I can't deny that. But there won't be new subs coming in and seeing as they already have showed us the current ones don't matter then I can't assume keeping mine would improve anything either. So the options I saw were 1) Hold pat and hope the bleeding slows despite no expectation of change or 2) Hit cancel and hope that something changes.

I'm tired of bleeding out.

i mean even just setting aside the emotional impact- the coverage loss is big enough they probably are thinking about how they have to rework the whole regular schedule. it's a huge operational hit.

I'm sure they took a psychological/emotional hit that will take time to recover from, but they also almost certainly have new logistical problems to sort out because they need to operate with one production focused team member instead of three.

I absolutely agree, and I think the site lost a lot when they transitioned to streaming from home. Heck, in today's deluge of streamers just having people in the same room would count as a differentiating factor. But at the same time you have to be realistic about things. As everyone's slice of the streaming revenue pie keeps shrinking, you have to be lean to survive.

Very sad day. Wish them all the very best. Glad to have "gotten to know" these nice folk (If one can call it that). Positive energy. Thanks for that.

Still great people on GB. I will stick around. I always have. Won't let Evil Corp change my ways this time either. Maube I'm stupid. That's ok.

Really hope there is a plan, both internally and externally, to archive all the content should things get worse. This past year I spent a lot of time revisiting 2012 media and in absolute shock that even popular podcasts, videos, and other content vanish from the internet within a decade. Outside Reddit and few other sites, most content goes away forever unless people proactively archive it. I've been rewatching GB videos from 2012 (now 2013) daily and it's such a timeless goldmine that I'd be gutted if it all went away for good.

Condolences to staff. Jason was always professional and gave life to some great series. I stopped following the site much in recent years -- part of the problem I guess -- but I can recognize Jess put a lot of effort and passion into some new ideas and projects.

On the bright side, I do think slimming down staff CAN work. The original GB crew was so solid with 4 key members and few surrounding folks that would make appearances.

Big losses- keeping the faith and my premium sub in front

This goes against everything Giant Bomb stands for. Absolutely no transparency. No care for the people who made this site what it is. Only caring about the bottom line. Giant Bomb is not a name I can trust anymore. I can't support a company that does this sort of thing. Great job completely ruining a once beloved site, Fandom Inc.

Serious bummer.

Justin, Voidburger and Jason, we will be watching were you end up, and if you need views, I for one will be there for ya! Thank you for all the amazing work!

@soot: Sadly Giant Bomb is now fully corporate. The staff cant even speak against it because they could get fired too. This is the opposite of why the site was created in the first place.

Jeff G literally started the site to be independent after being fired for corrupt and greedy reason and now were back to square one with staff getting fired to help rich people save some money. Its so depressive

Fuck. Just heard about this. This really fucking sucks. I feel terrible for Jason and Jess.

@shindig said:

Seconded. The duders greatest strength was being able to shoot videos and talk in the same room. The shift to remote work killed much of my interest. There was also this pivot to do non-gaming related things which turned me off too. I stuck around because I enjoy the podcasts and the forums, but now I'm not even sure about that anymore.

According to the most recent Game Mess Mornings, Jeff said the layoffs were seemingly random which doesn't bode well and depicts a lack of direction by the new owners.

I hope Jess and especially Jason land on their feet soon.

@yyninja: The fact they fired 2 important production/editor tell us they dont give a rat ass about the site producing content. Yeah its very bad news for the site future.

I just want to third this. Giant Bomb was ahead of its time when it came to video content, and unique in that you had people in a room able to interact and bounce off of one another. You could do gameshows based on N64 games. One person could play Tony Hawks Pro Skater while another builds a mini skate park.

As soon as they went to remote, and all scattered around the country, that spark was gone. Video based content is the norm now, and they're just like any other Twitch streamers. Unless they all move and start filming out of Dan's Basement, it's not coming back. And I think the odds of that happening, even if layoffs weren't happening, would be slim.

I'm not sure what they need their corporate overlords for anyway. They don't supply a studio. Giantbomb has been a collective of personalities from a variety of places since the pandemic began. Sure there's the website, but otherwise, what is stopping everyone from jumping ship and starting a patreon collectively like everyone else? Work for yourself and your fans will follow.

Sub cancelled. Sorry to everyone who will choose to stay.

This. The GB name doesn't really mean much any more.