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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
6 people. 6 people were laid off, and the game’s real director, who is Chinese and is in the update videos, is still working on the game. Thaddeus Sasser, who is the director that was let go from the Seattle office, said that the Chinese director was in charge of everything relating to the game itself, and that Thaddeus was basically only in charge of budget and hiring.
My understanding was that this little 6 man team did work on the game in an r&d role, testing stuff for levels, characters etc. So they weren’t a useless team, but I doubt they were as big a deal as the media is making out.
Most jobs provide some value, but I guarantee you the Chinese team already had double the amount of Chinese workers doing everything these 6 people did already. NetEase operates that way, its not unusual for them to have Chinese employees doing the same job as any of their small foreign offices, as it is cheaper for them to do so when they inevitably cut the more expensive, probably less productive team (be that due to language barriers or timezone differences, whatever the reason).
I just started playing the original game two weeks ago or so and time management is pretty much my main complaint right now. It feels a little too close to (or even more punishing than) real life, where there’s barely any time to keep up with my character’s needs after coming back from work.
It can be done though - I’m slowly getting used to how things work again and my sim has been leaving in a slightly better mood then before. Just need to get into a proper Sims mindset, I guess.
That’s the one thing that frustrates me the most about these games, too. Minutes fly by like seconds, but the Sims move in realtime! There’s never enough time to actually do anything in the game! So I keep my Sims unemployed and just cheat.
Been playing The Sims since 2001; in all those years I have never seen anyone release a timescale mod for any of the games. So when do play, most of my time is spent in Build/Buy mode.
They move in realtime, but they finish a meal in 10 seconds. Bathroom breaks and baths also take ~10 seconds. Not to mention that clothes changing is a single spinning jump. Wish it was that easy in real life
Was there an alarm clock in the first game? There was in TS2, and it’s a bit of a lifesaver (except when they went to sleep dead late and then refused to go to work)
As far as I know his account has not been banned. He admitted cheating yesterday and there’s no news on any ban. He was mentally banned in December but they reinstated his account. That’s before all the current drama so idk.
Mostly I suppose - but in the example/hypothetical given in the article of Sony moving it’s manufacturing from China to India, it would take 6-24 months minimum to find/develop the space they need and move the equipment. This cost to move all of the equipment half way across the world and the opportunity cost of out of stocks at stores worldwide when your distribution chain finally drys up - the cost was sited at 10%. If they MOVE a facility, I think that cost gets passed on to everybody worldwide.
There may be situations where JUST American production is moved to another country with more favorable tarrifs and worldwide production continues out of the existing facility, and probably in a situation like that, only the American costs would increase to cover the facility/equipmemt costs. But for that to make fiscal sense, this would have to be somehow CHEAPER than the price already elevated by the tarrifs. Companies could even in this case, theoretically hike prices worldwide to subsidize the impact to everybody. More people paying a higher prices mean everybody pays less.
Now, I couldn’t say if there’s any precident for the last line there. Purely hypothetical. But regardless - it’s entirely possible it WON’T be JUST Americans paying higher prices.
kotaku.com
Gorące