Mass Layoffs inbound across CBSi

@toughshed:

It could be argued by RV that we pay for premium content and the ads are a nice bonus.

That they continue that thought process and add a new higher priced tier to keep ad free and slightly lower the price for the “with ads” version to the frequently advertised $35 sale cost.

Only the higher tier keeps the store coupon.

But I also think that RV could get their affiliate money in ways that do not compromise the staff. For example, add affiliate links directly on video pages for every game tagged. Add a social media manager that actually pushes content for the site. Have the social channels be more like Wario64 for the site. Use that software that other sites like Kotaku used to use and change every single Amazon/Best Buy/etc link on the site (including forums and comments) to include the RV affiliate code.

Lots of ways to get money without wading into the sewer.

Is there any media giant on par with CBSi that would swoop in and give GB a new home? Vox or something? Just an idea. It's kind of one of the few "prestige" gaming outlets in games media: Known and beloved by many in the industry, media and general gaming fans. Not everyone visits or subs, but clearly it has a lot of sway and name recognition.

Would be kind of crazy if YouTube or Twitch ever get in bidding wars over places like Giant Bomb or Kinda Funny. It really is content that would bring you to a platform. If GB was suddenly part of Hitbox.ru or whatever, I'd show up.

There's a lot of silly doom and gloom in this thread and it's really overlooking, I feel, that since this is 2020 the aliens are going to show up and kill all of us before this is ever going to be a big problem.

@alternate:

Aye all of that could happen. I think YouTube is a near guarantee for almost all video.

But remember costs are more than just hard cash, it’s also time. They spend many, many, many hours on extremely long videos (like Mass Alex). That may get a few sales for the first episode, but not for the 13th episode. They could demand fewer of those and more Quick Looks which have a higher chance of selling something.

I could see adding things like affiliate links to purchase games in Quicklooks and in the Wiki. Hell, if they had them on Quicklooks maybe we'd know release dates and prices ;)

Twitch just stopped using GB wiki data as of about two weeks ago. They're now using the IGDB site that they acquired quite a while ago.

@efesell: naw man, the aliens fucking love Mass Alex, it's their second favourite show after Bake Off. All giant bomb staff and subscribers will be spared in the upcoming annihilation.

@martyns:

Don’t blame me for the annihilation of non-subscribers, I voted for Kodos.

Kang 2020: Are YOU Twirling As Much As You Feel You Were Four Years Ago?

"Were your dreams as a boy to become a baseball? Vote KANG"

@sombre:

“My opponent is against board with nails. Under my administration we will have the largest boards with nails stuck in them that have ever existed!”

I know this is obviously a joke, but Twitch does not use the GB wiki for their database anymore.

Yeah, shit, I'm paying $60 a year just for Brad and Will's podcast! I'd happily pay $10 to $15 per month ($120 - $180 year) for GB.

@ajamafalous: oh damn that must’ve just happened. Like a month ago they were still using it. I’m guessing someone saw the RV acquisition and started seeking out more stable sources for that stuff.

For sake of clarity - Vinny & the guys stated on the HotSpot today that they don't feel comfortable talking about the layoffs because it would be insensitive and rude to, and will come out with more information if/when they get it.

@dizzie_lizzie said:

tyty for this

No offence to half the people in this thread, but I think neither the staff nor the community needs to hear your business plan for how GB could transition to Patreon, YouTube, or back to startup website mode.

If any part of the Giant Bomb or CNet organization ends up being affected by layoffs, that will be a sad day, and it’s already been sad to hear of the Gamespot layoffs, but I don’t think it’s productive to go off on this wild presumptive tangent where you treat the closure of GB as some forgone conclusion. It’s not a foregone conclusion, and if it does come to pass then the staff will handle it as best they can. But how about we give the CBSi staff some respect and not wildly speculate how they should handle their professional lives if they lose their job. That’s really not the audience’s place here.

Actually, Twitch acquired IGDB over a year ago, so the change had been planned long before anything related to GB's sale.

You are right, though, that they only switched over last month.

@bisonhero: Thank you for putting into words how I've felt since this news started to break.

@bisonhero: Well said. Obviously this news is worrying, but a lot of this thread has just been unnecessary fantasy-business-manager nonsense.

@arjailer: yah well while being respectful is all well and good... I’ve got this amazing plan for how they can stream from a hot air balloon!

@kommando208: NaW. Jeff has a kid. He can buy the company just to keep this going. Hell he will have his daughter take over when she's 21. GBinfinite aint no tag line its a motto.

While I agree it's not helpful to play armchair website manager, it's pretty understandable that people who care a lot about this site are worried it will go away and are thinking of ways it could keep going. Let's not be too harsh on people here.

Thoughts for those left in the lurch if those dates are correct. Not knowing can be an immense stress multiplier.

If Giant Bomb is done, then I'll follow them wherever they go. But I don't see why you would get rid of something that is making you money and it seems like that's the case here so hopefully they are safe.

What you should all do is channel and focus that impotent, unbridled rage at "whoever the hell this is" and like the guy in Doom Eternal, send a blast of photokinetic energy at the moons of Mars, effectively crippling all ongoing activities in the interest of mining and colonization. We're here, we're queer, and it's that time of the year.

There are no NDAs in the sky! Bakalar can talk all about the Series X and there's nothing Phil can do about it!

Wild how many people in this thread have been on a games enthusiast website for THIS LONG and STILL DON'T KNOW how this shit works.

It's not as intentional as it might seem. And it is about MONEY FIRST AND FOREMOST. Just like all videogame/tech companies above a certain pay grade. If they don't like the site, they'll shitcan it without a second thought. If they do, they'll keep it forever.

I think it is important right now to understand a couple of things. First is that there have been dramatic changes to CBS since GB was purchased. Les Moonves, CBS chairman and CEO was fired after being accused of sexual misconduct. CBS owner National Amusement’s chairman was fired by owner Sumner Redstone the same year. While both men were fired with cause, I think it is very likely Sumner invented the complaints against them whole cloth, after they tried to have him declared mentally incompetent. Of course many a great businessman have underestimated Redstone and hiss will to win. So have several of the gold diggers who attempted to gain his fortune. So have his own children. Dozens of individuals over the past 20 years have attempted to cheat or trick their way into Redstone’s good graces. None of them remain working for National Amusements but his daughter, although she is neither chairman nor did she become owner when Redstone died a bit over a month ago.

So literally no one in the upper management of CBS or National Amusements from 10 years ago remains. On top of that, Sumner combined CBS with Viacom and Paramount last year, creating ViacomCBS. So the company CBS no longer exists. I have a feeling this sale of CBSi was always planned by Sumner’s daughter who now runs CBS after he died.

So that’s the history of why this is happening. The second thing to keep in mind is that GB is a profitable business and is respected within the gaming community. As a businessman there is no way I kill a business like that. If GB doesn’t fit into the business model of their new owners than their new owners would likely sell them off. Shutting them down is a waste of money. So GB isn’t going anywhere as long as Jeff and Vinny don’t want it to.

There's way too many people in this thread that don't understand capitalism. MONEY IS ALL THAT MATTERS TO CORPS. FULL STOP. Slashing and burning anything and everything in the name of sending the value of stolen labor to shareholders who never did a damn thing to earn it.

Don't just feel sorry for them. GET ANGRY. A multibillion dollar company is sentencing these people to starve to death in the middle of a pandemic and the SECOND Great Recession in not even 15 years! After a lot of them gave their whole careers to the ungrateful capitalist class that was siphoning off their hard work just so their line could go up.

My opinion when CBS picked up GB was that they were picking up a profitable little competitor site that offered something different from Gamespot, so they could co-exist, maybe even support each other, they had office space and plenty of experience setting up creative teams, no problems.
Red Venture? I've no idea, in an ideal world they just want GB to keep doing what they're doing, but that depends entirely on the state of subscriptions... or how much they can get from ads but i imagine GB doesn't get a lot of outside traffic, there's no clickbait here, no mass appeal.
I don't know if RV is interested in supporting a group of dudes who are, for the most part, chilling out and having fun indulging in a hobby, that's where i'm at.
There's also loads of technical questions about where videos are hosted, where site engineers are going etc...
No one needs these answers more than the crew.

In an end of the site scenario the ideal situation is probably they go Patreon, they'd have to change the name of the site obviously, host videos entirely on Youtube with Patreon exclusive private vids, since they make all their vids at home it probably won't change much about the workflow, it just depends if Patreon is enough income for everyone (i don't know what the state of Premium subs are). If that won't work... it's over.

@yoctoyotta: My thoughts exactly.

@temg99@lonelyspacepanda

Unfortunately, Patreon doesn't come with health care, dental care, benefits, pension, etc.

@therealturk: Having been though a few business mergers/sales, this seems mostly right. It's about business profitability. On the books, CBSi needs to reach a specific EBITDA (profitability) to meet the terms of the deal, and if they can't bring in new money on the front end, they can get there on the back end. These types of layoffs are bloodbaths because all that matters is that they hit the number to make the deal.

This pretty much says what needs to be said. We are just going to wait and see what happens. The constant speculation of what is going to happen or how GB goes about their business is not helpful. Things change and we are going to have to deal with it one way or another.

Agreed. All we can do is hope and wish the best for everyone involved. There are people who REALLY need to have a secure job right now and the threat of layoffs is going to be very stressful.

I hope everyone lands on their feet, and agreed that while tempting, it's probably not super helpful to analyze what's going on.

Giant Bomb is very much personality driven. If even one person is laid off from the team, their absence will be felt.

Well, I jumped from GS, to GB back when the "event occurred", I'll jump again to wherever these guys go next, Jeff, Vinny, Brad, Alex, I will always follow you mother truckers, I'm currently 31... been listening to you guys since i was 12 or something, Jesus Christ.

how many producers are at GB? Sorry but that doesn't seem good.

@zmilla: I and at least a few others pointed this out during Lockdown 2020 (not to be confused with the never ending lockdown that is 2020-2023...):

There is a reason just about everyone did so many solo streams. If you are part of a company that is "trimming the fat" for whatever reason, being able to say that each of your employees has a unique value goes a long way. Because the folk watching sims baby challenge aren't necessarily the ones watching dragon's dogma or bloodborne or astroneer.

@gundato: the reason they did so many solo streams is obviously that its really hard to do the opposite and takes work. They're still getting up to speed on it. It was not some business move, they've already shifted back.

@andrewf87462: Indeed, one example of how it can work is Easy Allies, i don't follow them really so i don't know much about their living situations, but GB at this point is quite a large team all with family i can't see them risking going this route, maybe some years ago when there was less on the line.
But again i don't know how many of us are premium and willing to move that subscription over to a Patreon, if there's 10-20,000 of us they'd do very well, we'd probably end up paying less too since CBS/RV aren't taking a cut, though i don't know what % Patreon itself takes, i assume it's reasonable.
(I can't make any sense of the Alexa website, i'm trying to get an idea of how many people visit GB)

In a way, the pandemic may have come at a serendipitous time for GB. Jeff has said several times that one of their big selling points is how lean they run, and now they have demonstrated that the site can be run without expensive office or studio spaces. No matter what the terms of the deal ends up being, they won't be able to operate out of their current premises forever. It kinda sucks, but I expect the current format will continue even after it's safe to stop isolation. I just hope someone will liberate Luchadeer before everything is thrown out.

I hate what's happening to the GS folks, but I'm not worried about GB because I just can't imagine they would dismantle a small, profitable business. And to be fair, they did say that the 'the vast majority' across these sites would remain.

I know many here think that we shouldn't comment on these goings on, since doesn't affect us primarily, and that those it did affect should have privacy. But man, the way they went about it... and the fact that they're doing it now, we should say we find it disgraceful.

I get speculating on GB but people being sacked as part of the deal should not be forgotten. The way it's sold as "business as usual" is exactly how they keep getting away with it. It was the thing I was afraid of and it immediately makes me skeptical of RV more than I already was.

Downplaying the commentary I think is more directed at arm-chair business analysis and hyper-focus on GB over the bigger picture. Being aware and angry about how people were done dirty here is what we should be doing.

And it hits even harder knowing just how fractured the media world is right now. Sure, some people will get snapped up but maybe not everyone and it takes a toll on everyone regardless. Layoffs should be treated as a dire thing that it is.

@yoctoyotta: wait. Brad and Will have a podcast?! Holy shit I need that. Closest thing to old school This Is Only A Test.

I've been scanning/reading posts and one thing I haven't really seen is potential attrition... (simplified story below)

GB was founded when a management team tried to force things upon the staff... JeffG and Ryan started a little something then were joined by other former coworkers. I don't know what the odds are of something like that happening again, but if they did do it as a team, then yeah, I'd be part of that Patreon to help them self-fund. That said, there's also a chance that some of the old-timers may not like how things are going and opt out on their own, regardless of the odds of a future new team. If that were to happen, RV would most definitely lose out because a chunk of the community would bail on them. I would just feel bad for those who then remained.

I certainly hope the team pulls through this relatively unscathed because they do have a certain cohesion that you don't see in some other companies. At this moment, I'll just wait until something more conclusive comes to light.

Kelly

PS. Before anyone flames me, I've only been a part of 2 acquisitions... in one, a company three times our size acquired our software firm, all but 1 of ~220 were re-hired. In the second, our startup of ~30 people was acquired by a much larger firm which was a subsidiary of another... grandparent company was some 67k people. Not two years later, our group is hoping to get back to 15 people. Loss through attrition due to processes and business values does happen.