this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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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...
That site just isnt the same anymore. It’s like being run by the mittani
"Mom! I want to read articles on Polygon!"
We have Polygon at home.
The Polygon at home:
Polgyon
Plgyon is the Temu version of Polygon.
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.
EDIT: Giant Bomb may be dead as of this afternoon.
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.
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.
Oh that's actually pretty sad to hear—I did not realise they had new owners
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.
Do you know what were the 'core values' of the new Fandom they betrayed?
If you listen to episode 888, you'll hear pretty quickly exactly why they got fired and why they thought it was important to do what they did.
Let's be real, it has been dead for a while.
Their video content is pretty good.
I fell off just post-pandemic, but I came back when Gerstmann left, and it was great for a long while again.
I left with Jeff, Vinny Brad n Alex, tried to come back a few times, but it just never hit the same.
Lucy & Tamoor were great since their Gamespot days, Dan came back and Bakalar/Grubb are solid. I'm sure there are others that joined after the fact, but it just didn't feel like GB without the core group. (Sidenote: hope jason is doing well with all the health stuff).
At one point I think Jan was downplaying Jeffs importance, and that may have been the last time I gave them my time.
I feel like the writing was on the wall since the last acquisition. Respect for them, trying to keep it alive, for as long as they did.
Edit: side shout-out to PackBenPack, Abby 'from 'Brooklyn' & Not That Will Smith. Ben has showed up on The Gerstmann Podcast, Abby & Will are regulars on Nextlander. Also miss Drew n Alexis. Rest in power Ryan Davis, China Truly Don't Care.
I have no ill will toward Gerstmann, but there came a point where he became very unentertaining, so when I heard he was gone, it was a good signal for me to give them another try, and Grubb fit into that old Gerstmann interviewer role very well while also being a more positive guy and someone who might break some news. They had a really good group, and Blight Club was an all-timer Giant Bomb show.
Yeah, he did seem to get more negative near the end, most likely due to everything happening behind the scenes. And after Ben left, he didn't really connect with anyone left over. Him & Ben played off each-other quite well, was reminiscent of Ryan, in a way.
Fuck. Long time, first time. I'm a few episodes behind. Any additional info available? Links?
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.
Dan removed GB from his BSky bio, and Grubb posted that he's no longer with GB.
To add more context, last night Dan was streaming on Twitch and said he expects episode 888 to be the last Bombcast. He said things that, if he stays employed, would make Fandom the most understanding employer ever. To use words he used: he'll keep taking their money as long as they'll give it to him, but he expects that won't keep happening for very long. He's very annoyed with working for giant corporations and wants to bet on himself.
Aww geez. Thanks for the summary duder. Been at a conference in the bay so kinda detached from it all. Gonna be wild if Fandom is the shitdicks that kill GB.
If Episode 888 is the last Bombcast, it will leave the world with the integrity that created it in the first place. Give it a listen, when you get around to it.
Copy that. Found a drop on archive.org. Planning to grab it when I'm back home. Cheers friend!
Breaking news: Grubb seems to have been let go.
What the fuck.
Awesome. Yet another reason to donate to the IA!
Edit: Grabbed episode 888 from IA. I'm only 10 minutes in and already these guys are going for it. I love this, fuck Fandom.
Layoffs is the precursor to adopting LLM generated content?
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
Mass layoffs, though. That doesn't usually presage a great time in a news site's life.
No, not at all, generally not a good sign whatsoever (unless you're wall st apparently). 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, just trying to rationalise
Looking through their portfolio, I honestly don't know how XDA and Android Police maintain their quality levels. Everything else is Taboola-level click farming junk.
The new owner seems to have a few gaming brands already, Game Rant
Isn't GameRant, like, 90% AI-generated clickbait content nowadays? Can't talk about what they were about a few years ago, but every time I find a GR article when looking for something, it's clickbait AI slop. Like "When will the sequel to X release? Everything you need to know" (scroll down to read post) "there's no confirmation about a sequel".
There's also a complete rehash of the Wikipedia article about the game, its release and reception, and maybe even a slideshow of memes before you get to the "No confirmation" part. And then a list of all the times the developers have said, "yeah, if they want to do another one, we'd take their money."
TBF it's not something I really read, just that I've heard of it. Though that's a pretty clear signal of what the future holds for Polygon then
Damn! I never knew.
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.
Will GameInformer be the chosen one....?
I mean, GI already died and came back once, so maybe