Jeez, I wasn’t paying attention.
Just came across this Variety article and it seems to be quite elaborate. Have to confess I haven’t read it yet, but thought I’d drop it in here in case anyone else is interested.
Reckon I’ll give it a skim later today.
PC gaming d0med?
On the latest episode of his podcast that I keep listening to for reasons I don’t quite understand, Jeff Gerstmann confirmed that he was planning to leave Giant Bomb… and then got fired instead for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to him.
Not entirely shocking, since he didn’t seem like a great fit with some of the newer GB stuff, but… wow.
That’s a kick in the pants, getting fired from a company you created.
Maybe I misunderstood, but it sounded like Red Ventures had some idea that he wanted to leave after E3, and then someone in management decided to move the date up without Jeff’s input. Which is fairly common at large corporations and wouldn’t have anything to do with fitting in with the new people.
And of course, that’s a dick move but corporations are dicks. So not really surprising if that were the case.
Suff like this happens all the time.
Fire the guy making the large salary, because he has been there for a while. Hire someone to do the same job for lower pay.
Pretty easy, especially if the guy already was thinking about exiting the company.
Kind of a jerk move to spring it on someone like they did though. In this situation they probably could have gotten Jeff to do the “hand over the reigns and train the new guy” period they force people being laid off to do, because I am sure he would have been OK with working with someone he knew, to continue the site he founded.
So weird.
Pretty nice little oral history of the making of the first Mass Effect game -
Just cook the popcorn before staring to watch the video
French site Gamekult:
Readers, players,
It is with a heavy heart that we announce that as of December 7th, the editorial staff will gradually leave Gamekult.
We understand the magnitude of this news. Although taken almost unanimously, this decision reflects the personal journey of each journalist, editor, reporter and freelance journalists. A reflection that follows the announcement of our change of owner, which was announced on October 18.
After considering all the options, this is the only way out for us possible.
Despite an economic and media context that is increasingly hostile to independent video game press, you have proved with your support that that there is room for another way.
A page is turned but GK continues: the team will ensure its mission of information until its last day, and the site will continue its activity to ensure the transition with the future editorial staff.
Thank you for all these years with you.
Oooooof. They’ve been around for ages.
Games journalism: repeat the same story for two months, to fill your quota of hits.
I’ve noticed a lot of the more “bloggy” type news sites have even started removing the publishing date. Must be so they can keep digging it up again and pretending its fresh without the hassle of tampering with the dates.
Yeah, also doing stories with “site staff” as the writer.
I also think that the way Google recommendations work that incentivize this. I see a lot of recommendations of week-ish old stories these days. I assume that they are gaming that system but also wanting to have the story look new once it finally bubbles up through that algorithm.
Repeated or not, they’re not wrong.
That story is from October 20.
Content farm sites are notorious for gaming the algorithm by constantly re-dating old articles with current dates. You’ll see an article talking a a topic from 2010 but its dateline and search result will say it was posted last month.
Layoffs at IGN.