Giant Bomb also going through some shit right now. They just put up a podcast with a big middle finger to their new bosses, and it got pulled.
Gaming Website Polgyon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Layoffs
Submitted 3 days ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://kotaku.com/polygon-sold-vox-media-valnet-layoffs-digital-gaming-1851778655
Comments
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 days ago
villainy@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Here we are, 17 years after a bunch of clueless suits fucked with GameSpot and led to the creation of Giant Bomb. Now it’s a whole new set of clueless suits fucking with Giant Bomb. It’s the circle of capitalism.
I was in deep for GB until the Nextlander split and slowly trailed off since then. I still have mad respect for that group and follow most of them in one way or another. This is a new level of dire for them.
The Giant Bomb Preservation Project still appears to be active so… at least there’s that I guess.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’s looking like GB is now dead. At the very least, I’m confident I’ll continue to get Blight Club and Jeff’s news show, even though they won’t be at a site called Giant Bomb. Hopefully everyone else found a place where they can land on their feet. Their personal brands are stronger than Fandom’s.
9point6@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Oh that’s actually pretty sad to hear—I did not realise they had new owners
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 days ago
They’ve been owned by Fandom for a little while now, and they even made some good changes lately, but then someone a few rungs up the corporate ladder was replaced with someone who decided to make a pretty huge change to the company that basically compromises the entire point of Giant Bomb, if not also Gamespot.
vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Fuck. Long time, first time. I’m a few episodes behind. Any additional info available? Links?
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 days ago
See my other comment below, but the gist of it is that they were told to pause streaming for a while as everyone tries to figure out a path forward. They put out one Bombcast that rebelled against the new Fandom “values”, and you can find a link to it if you look through Bluesky or the Giant Bomb reddit. They’re still paused, and it’s been about a week now. It might be the end of Giant Bomb, in which case, Grubb, Mike, and Dan have sworn to keep doing Blight Club, and the others are probably preparing their parachutes too. It also might not be the end of Giant Bomb; nothing’s been decided yet, and everyone currently still has their jobs.
savutano@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Let’s be real, it has been dead for a while.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I fell off just post-pandemic, but I came back when Gerstmann left, and it was great for a long while again.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 days ago
Their video content is pretty good.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Kotaku: “sold to click-farm powerhouse Valnet”
That very same page: click-bair links after paragraph 1, paragraph 2, a top-anchored video link after paragraph 3, and an endless list of links at the bottom of the page. And that’s with DNS ad-blocking and ublock. I’m curious what it looks like without, but I don’t want to get tech-cancer.
Don’t throw shit if you are also covered in it, Kotaku. I never really liked the site but I don’t remember it being in this sad of a state…
YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
That site just isnt the same anymore. It’s like being run by the mittani
YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Layoffs is the precursor to adopting LLM generated content?
HollowNaught@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Why must God continually punish them for their hubris, making their work never done?
9point6@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Hmm, had to look up who these guys were
Apparently they own XDA and Android Police too, which haven’t gone entirely to shit
I’ll tentatively put the pitchfork away
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Mass layoffs, though. That doesn’t usually presage a great time in a news site’s life.
9point6@lemmy.world 3 days ago
No, not at all, generally not a good sign at all. I guess there’s the chance it was particularly inefficiently staffed, but then Vox seem like they should have known what they were doing, so that doesn’t seem likely.
The new owner seems to have a few gaming brands already, Game Rant being the only one I’ve heard of though. Perhaps they’re planning a consolidation and this is the redundancy from that?
Not necessarily saying there’s a silver lining, I guess I’m maybe looking for one
j0ester@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Damn! I never knew.
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Aftermath is the only gaming site I really pay attention to anymore. I still have Kotaku and PCGamer in my RSS reader, but I don’t really read any of their articles.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Will GameInformer be the chosen one…?
djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
I mean, GI already died and came back once, so maybe
otp@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
“Mom! I want to read articles on Polygon!”
We have Polygon at home.
The Polygon at home:
j0ester@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Plgyon is the Temu version of Polygon.