Maylo-ditations - Musings on Indie GB, One Year Later

We are about a year removed from PAX East 2025, which means that we are one year removed from Giant Bomb Independence Day.  Maylo, if you will. 

This time last year, the GB community was awash in emotions. At long last, we were witnessing the inevitable death of Giant Bomb. A website about video games.

A website that should have died a bunch of times.

It should have died when the whiskey media money dried up. It should have died after the CBS sale went through. It should have died with Ryan Davis. It should have died with covid. It should have died when the nextlander guys left. It should have died when Jeff Gerstmann got fired. It should have died when it got sold to Fandom. It should have died when some suit caught wind of the Marvel Rivals “thigh” stream. It should have died when Minotti was away at Disney. 

Being a fan of Giant Bomb always meant enjoying the output of the site while simultaneously wondering, if not worrying, about how well the site was doing. It's always been a smaller, niche thing. For a lot of its history, that has been to its benefit. One of the allures of Giant Bomb as a property has been that it's this small, cool thing with a distinct identity. But ultimately, it has often been a site with a pretty significant head count, and which has been often owned by large corporations. It always seemed a given that, no matter how sustainable it might have been at times, at some point a bean counter or executive at its parent company would see that name on a spreadsheet and ask “what the fuck is giant bomb?” 

I discovered GB in 2013. It was E3 season. New consoles were on the horizon. I was just getting back heavy into games. I wanted a media outlet to follow the news with but wasn’t sure exactly where to go. The big sites, IGN and Gamespot were long established and always had sordid reputations. Especially gamespot. Though I wasn't particularly online at that time, I remember hearing about the news of Jeff’s firing, via EGM, GameInformer, and on G4. It was a name and a story that stuck with me. 

Around this same time, i got big into reddit. It was pretty common to see GB articles and videos show up on the front page of /r/games. I don’t think I ever clicked the links but GB showed up frequently enough that they became a notable name. So when I decided to find an outlet to help navigate me through the new console announcements, I figured i’d look into GB. The first thing i realized was that, hey, there’s that one dude who got fired from gamespot? Oh shit, this is his website! INTEGRITY BABEEYYYYY. And also, the white dude with the afro from the dying days of G4 to boot! Neato! 

The first piece of GB content I consumed was the annual sealed envelope bombcast from 2013. It was the hardest I'd laughed at a podcast for ages. The dudes had great rapport. Jeff was extremely insightful and cantankerous, not to mention extremely hilarious (”These assholes made me sign embargoes for games that are already out”). Ryan was also quite funny and a great host, Patrick was articulate and insightful and Vinny was a goddamn genius. 

Throughout e3 i watched a good number of the videos and listened to a handful of the podcasts/GB at nite shows - this is where I learned they were wrestling fans. As a lapsed but rapidly relapsing fan myself, this was another massive plus. It also helped that they broke some pretty significant news regarding the Xbox one always online debacle during that period. I was a blossoming fan of Giant Bomb. 

Then around late June/early July, I had a very shitty thing happen in my personal life. I won’t get into detail here, but for a short time my life was in upheaval and I found myself in a precarious living situation, sleeping on couches. I remember logging onto twitter one summer morning, reading the news that Ryan Davis had passed away. Shit. I recognized the name, but was not familiar enough yet to match it with a face or voice. Regardless, I remember thinking damn, I just got here and things are already going south. 

Tributes poured in from across the gaming industry and games media landscape. It became instantly clear just how loved and respected Giant Bomb was. In the immediate wake of the news, I recall seeing a tweet or tumblr post from a fan who suggested the crew skip the bombcast that week. Jeff’s response was essentially “not a chance.” 

And I'm grateful they didn’t. The bombcast after Ryan’s death is one of the greatest they ever did. It provided a rare chance to hear from EVERYONE at giant bomb, including some of the behind the scenes people and those who had recently departed or would soon do so - like dave  alexis, rorie, etc. Lots of old war stories and heartfelt memories. And during a moment of crushing silence - Jeff breaks it up with a wise crack about “now the reason i brought you guys in today… Wii U Virtual console releases!” It was a simple quip that encapsulated the reason people loved GB of that era (and to be sure, there is a through line of that sort of vibe which lives on today). 

The rest of 2013 was a challenging period for GB. Their video output slowed. The guys were all reeling. They were working through the grief and did their best to pick up the pieces, but the devastation was apparent. As weird a time as this was, especially for a new fan, some of my favorite GB memories came from that period. The Vinny and Jeff co-host era of the bombcast, where these two massive personalities got the opportunity to riff directly off each other was great. Brad was in his element as a third mic. And with Patrick having left for Chicago, Drew Scanlon became a regular on the pod, and i quickly fell in love with the blinking white guy.

As the months passed since Ryan’s death, there was a sense that things were slowly looking up. They were picking up the pieces and figuring out a path forward in the face of such cataclysm. But the feeling of unease crept in periodically, this feeling that things were still in flux, and that more change was coming. Vinny was quickly my favorite personality on the site and I distinctly remember feeling that something was going on with him. And early in 2014, it was announced that he was leaving… For New York to start Giant Bomb east. Well, thank god he’s not LEAVING leaving, but man that still sucks that we won’t get to see him and Jeff, or him and Drew, or him and Brad, perhaps my favorite duo of all.

But when one door closes…

Late 2013, into early 2014, I started to take note of a twitter account that Jeff would retweet and/or interact with frequently. This dude worked in games media. He was a wrestling fan. He was a troll. And boy, was he fucking funny. His feud with Jose Canseco was the first thing that caught my attention. Then he started a kickstarter for a book where the only premise was to prove that he could crowdfund more money than his new rival, which he did. It was hilarious. 

Dan Ryckert soon became my favorite follow on twitter. He ticked all the right boxes - games, wrestling, troll, hilarious. So, following Vinny’s departure for GBeast, when the SF office announced a couple of job openings, my immediate dream scenario was Dan joining Giant Bomb. Things quickly started pointing in that direction, with Dan and Jason Oestricher both announcing their departure from Game Informer. 2014 games media was a completely different universe than it is today with significantly more companies to work for (and much less capacity for independence - that would change soon after with the birth of Kinda Funny), so it wasn’t a given that they were going to work for Giant Bomb, but there was a lot of smoke rising from Minneapolis, wafting westward. 

The week that Dan and Jason arrived at SF. I was working a part time summer gig, doing door to door sales. It was a low key job and the old man i worked with was friendly enough, but there was a lot of down time, which i spent scrolling twitter. Dan spent several days tweeting out obvious misdirection - showing up for a photo at IGN’s recognizable brick offices; changing his twitter picture to the polygonal avatar used by all the polygon staff at the time. There are probably others I’m forgetting about, but point is he was obviously taking the piss and it was quite obvious he was GB bound.  

The day it was announced i was fucking thrilled. The funny thing is, I am pretty sure the first time I ever heard Dan Ryckert speak was during his first Bombcast as an employee of GB/CBSi. Early Dan was a force of nature. the GB fandom was divided (which tbf was always the case with new hires). Dan was a real lightning rod. And some of the early bombcasts were particularly dan heavy, with the back halves filled with his old stories, and the intros chock full of tales of Dan’s SF misadventures. One of the funniest parts of Dan's early days is just how much Brad seemed to loathe him. Some of this was projection and/or radio magic (same thing happened with Brad and Ryan) but there were some bombcast clips - “he could lick a peach for days” where Brad clearly shoot hot at Dan. 

One thing that must be said about dan’s tenure at GB west is that he single handedly reinvigorated the site when it was in most dire need of a strong personality. Ryan had died. Vinny had moved. Jeff, Brad and Drew were all fantastic, and Danny O’Dwyer was starting to appear on occasion which was always a delight. And all these dudes were still insightful and knowledgeable about video games. But video games were always a second priority for me. Brad was the straight man. Drew was an excellent third mic. Jeff was lightning fast and witty but he was always best when he had someone boisterous to play off of - why he and ryan, and later he and vinny had such great chemistry. 

Dan filled a massive personality void left by Ryan and Vinny. He was not a replacement for those dudes, rather he brought something new and unique. An unbridled exuberance, lust for life, puppy like energy to a site that desperately needed a shot in the arm. And he was a bona-fide content machine; the guy basically provided 2/3rds of the reason to sub to premium. If the 2013 E3 sealed envelope spectacular, the ryan tribute show and the Jeff/Vinny bombcast era made me a fan of GB, Dan Ryckert made me a diehard. 

When Vinny and Alex spun up GB East, I listened and watched some of the stuff they were putting out, but to be honest, at that time in my life I wasn't that big a fan. Though i appreciated Austin Walker and his unique perspective and academic/literary angle on criticism I wasn’t the target audience for it.  The GBeast content was of such a deliberately different pace from the SF stuff that it didn’t click with me. 

One thing led to another and Austin leaves to start waypoint, Dan loses a loser leaves town match and gets kicked of San Francisco. Somehow, he found his way to New York. This, for me, was THE era of GBeast. And to be sure, Giant Bomb has had a series of golden ages (including the one we’ve been in since Mike Minotti joined ) but if i had to pick ONE golden era, desert island style, GBEast with Vinny, Alex, Bakalar, Dan and Abby (and sometimes Mahardy!)   would be it. 

Nobody else at GiantBomb hit the ground running quite like Abby Russel. She was and still is effortlessly funny, and her vibes have always been contagious. Abby was the perfect compliment to the other folks on the site.  She has always been, low key, the coolest duder. And i’m not even gonna be corny or patronizing and say that “she brought a valuable perspective that the site was sorely missing up to that point.” While this is true, that wasn’t why I kept following the site after e3 or after the launch window of whatever game I wanted to hear about. It was always about the vibe, the hang, the chemistry between the crew. There is nobody else who could have fit into that specific crew at GBEast with Dan, Vinny, Alex and Bakalar better than Abby from Brooklyn. 

I will admit that this period of GBwest was the lowest point for me interest wise. I kept up with them regularly until Drew left. I loved Drew, he was always up beat and exuded positivity which complimented the other guys quite nicely. His leaving was the first major sea change during my fandom (with Ryan's passing, i was too new, Patrick was alone in Chicago when i started watching so it wasn’t as impactful compared to if he was at the SF studio still, and vinny didn’t technically leave). As would become the theme with GB leavers, though, he continued putting out stuff for our enjoyment. I still think about the early clothmap days. Even all these years later I am occasionally tempted to buy a Timex weekender. 

Even thought the SF office wasn’t putting out content I vibed with, GBEast was firing on all cylinders. Steal my sunshine, playdate, this is the run, seven deadly sims. It was truly a golden age for Giant Bomb.

All good things come to an end. In early 2020, Dan announced he was leaving GB. I was devastated. I love that dude. He has brought so much joy to my life. GB wasn’t dead without him, but it was hard to imagine GB without him. And honestly, I always pictured him as a lifer. But the Forest Gump of gaming, though his combination of dumb luck and sheer force of will managed to snag another dream career at WWE.

Then covid happened. And if there’s one good thing to come out of a global pandemic, it was that it forced proof of concept that all those duders can do this job from home. The early covid output - the minecraft streams, specifically, were fantastic. The WFH podcasts were definitely an adjustment, And having heard Brad and Vinny talk on a NL podcast about how much work they had to put in to figure out cross coast streaming, its kind of a wonder that this thing kept rolling through the pandemic. 

In the second half of the year, Abby announced she was leaving. This fucking sucked. When Dan left I was gutted, but when Abby left it felt like GB East truly changed. This is a strange analogy but bear with me. Abby was the dash of dijon that brightened up the sauce. Without it, it just lacks something. You may not be able to articulate why, but it’s not as good as it was or could be. 

Abby’s departure made me worry about the future of GB East, and GB in general. These feelings only amplified when Ben left. For the rest of 2020, GB sort of just limped on. Later that year it was announced that CBSi was sold to Red Ventures. There’s just something about a company with the word “ventures” in it that lets you know you’re fucked. 

Some time in early 2021, there was a bombcast with some unexpected guests - Vinny and Alex! Hell yeah, maybe they’re gonna start doing the podcast together again, that would fucking rule! Oh wait, they’re leaving. BRAD is too! Fuck. 

As bummed as I was with all of the previous departures, the news that these three were leaving had me devastated. For some people, Giant Bomb was Jeff Gerstmann. For the majority of my fandom, it was the four pillars - Jeff, Vinny, Brad and Alex. And with these three leaving, it was hard to picture what giant bomb was going to be like thereafter, and even more difficult to imagine it being something I was still a fan of. 

Giant Bomb changed drastically after that. It became less gaming centric, more of a variety show with a bunch of misc. guests from outside the site and gaming sphere at large. I hated it. I always figured that Giant Bomb underwent this change because the only way for Giant Bomb to continue to exist was to pivot to a weird variety show of sorts. Turns out that was wrong and this was all a deliberate, but horribly conceived pivot. 

When the nextlander guys left, there was a reasonable chance that these dudes simply rode off into the sunset, never to be seen publicly again. Or at least, it would become a rare thing. I wasn’t sure that they wanted to stay in the public light, that they thought they could pull it off, or that they were willing to take that risk at this point in their lives. They are men of a certain age, Vinny has a whole ass family. Going independent with no safety net is daunting. So I resigned myself to the possibility that these dudes would go their own ways. I chose to be grateful for the years that these three guys chose to put themselves out there for our enjoyment. They brought a lot of joy to a lot of people, gave us a sense of community, and somewhere to belong. If they decided to never put out another item for public enjoyment, then we were already spoiled beyond belief. 

Then it happened. Launch day. I was so so elated i shed tears. I was so sure that this was it for these guys, that i’d never see them outside the odd podcast appearance.. When i saw the tweet announcing Nextlander i was flabbergasted, flummoxed, befuddled, turgid, and gobsmacked all at the same time. Needless to say, that was the quickest sub i ever pledged.  And i followed nextlander for years. It was, and still is, extremely enjoyable. It is a known quantity. You know you’re gonna get three to four streams a week, with some old friends like abby from brooklyn  LA and Will Smith. But. similar to Gerstamann, these are three middle aged dudes who have mellowed and who have fixed parameters for what kind of content they’re gonna do. And so while it is still often enjoyable, and it has changed over time (the friendslop streams they do are still some of my favorite things to watch). But you kind of know what you’re gonna get from nextlander, and that it isnot going to be Giant Bomb East. And that’s ok. They already did that. Opeth put out Still Life and Black Water Park and Ghost Reveries, some of the best heavy albums of all time. If they decide to go in a slightly different direction with Pale Communion or Heritage, its understandable and still very much worth supporting on its own merit. That’s how a feel about Nextlander. 

In 2022, it was announced that Jeff was no longer at Giant Bomb. My thought was, this site has been a shell of its former self for a while now, so how the fuck do they expect to operate now with the final pillar gone? Same as with nextlander, the day Jeff launched his patreon, i was a day one sub. Even though I hadn't watched anything from Jeff for years at that point, I was bound to support him out of loyalty for what he’d done and, in a way, out of spite. It sounds silly to say, but I was angry at the idea that GiantBomb was still a thing. What was the point? They weren’t a website about video games anymore. They weren’t a website I recognized, in terms of content or personality. I remember thinking there was literally no reason to ever tune in to a GB video ever again, and there was nothing they could do to change my mind. 

But just when I was out. THEY PULL ME BACK IN. 

In what can only be described as a Monday Night War ass move, Dan Ryckert came back to Giant Bomb.  “Fuuuuuck,” was my first thought. GB had for a couple years been a complicated thing in my mind. It brought me a lot of joy previously, but had been changing for a while now and with Gerstmann’s departure, I was ready for a clean break. Ready to move on and never think about it again. But fuuuuuuckkk. Dan was back. Goddamnit. Dan was a content machine. During his time at WWE, he launched Fire Escape with Mary and Mahardy and it was great to hear these three shoot the shit again. And throughout the pandemic, he did twitch streams which can only be described as masochistic assaults on the senses. They were 100% unadulterated Dan Ryckert. I always enjoyed Dan, but I wasn't always able to enjoy his streams lol. I still longed to see collaborate with other people, and the bi-weekly appetizer that was fire escape left me wanting even more.

So when Dan was brought back into Giant Bomb I was excited to say the least. It was weird seeing this combo of familiar faces and new ones. Bakalar, Jason, Jan, my dudes. Jess,  Grubb, Tam and Lucy, never heard of em! But with Dan back in the fold, I was ready to give them a shot. 

The first stretch of Dan’s return was weird. From the start, if there was one piece of GB content I consumed every week, it was the Bombcast. And Dan didn’t appear on the bombcast in those days.  There were various streams throughout the week, but more often than not, when I’d tune in to one, Dan wasn’t there! It’s not that I didn't want to give the new crew a chance, its that I associated them with this weird, low period of GB history. Fr me to give them a chance, Dan would need to be a more regular fixture. 

Eventually that did happen. At this time I still mainly watched Nextlander’s stuff and a smattering of Gerstmann’s. But beginning with the precursor to Blight Club, the Sonic 06 streams, I started watching the new GB stuff. They were really onto something. Jess, Grubb and Dan had strong chemistry. There was a lot of shooting the shit on these streams. Lotta laughs. The vibes of vintage GB were there. I still didn’t catch the bombcast most weeks, but I was at least in tune to the site and its goings on, and was really enjoying what content I did consume. 

After Sonic 06, the crew moved onto Bubsy 3d. This was an omen of things to come, as soon thereafter, Jess and Jason were laid off by fandom. I was entrenched enough in the site again to have been upset by this move, as Jess was really vibing with the other duders and Jason, in addition to having really gone through some shit, was always a good egg. However, at that time, GB was only occasional viewing for me and i wasn’t super invested in the site or its future.

This changed thanks to a quirky Italian man from northeast Ohio. 

I don’t recall the first time I saw Mike Minotti on GB content. The first time I really became aware of him was the occasional appreciation post on the GB reddit. Pretty quickly people were complementary toward him, saying he really came to the rescue after Jess and Jason were let go. I also remember a handful of posts from people worried that he might not be getting compensated for the ample time he was spending on streams lol. 

It was at this point where blight club and GB as a whole was hitting its stride. The chemistry of Grubb, Minotti, Dan and Jan was impeccable. The debut of each new season was destination viewing. Each duder was a delight to watch get blighted, but none more so than Minotti. It has occurred to me over the years that in the same way that Dan reinvigorated GB after Ryan passed and Vinny started GBE, Minotti did much the same for GB after Jess and Jason were laid off. Jess was a fun hang and had good rapport with the other duders, but Mike Minotti was and is a treasure unto himself. It boggles my mind that it took this long for him to break out as a games media personality. He is charming, funny, weird, unfiltered, yet self aware in a way Dan usually isn’t. He is basically Dan if Paul Ryckert got a medical degree. 

Introducing the GB world to Mike Minotti is one of Jeff Grubb’s greatest contributions to the industry. Pretty soon I became a regular listener to Game Mess and Nintendogs. I loved hearing them both on the Bombcast of course, but there’s something special about hearing just Mike and Grubb together, with Shawn and Cristian chiming in from time to time. Grubb is Grubb regardless of the venue - and that’s a great thing. He’s always earnest, insightful, and occasionally irreverent in a hilarious way. On the bombcast, Mike is in performance mode. He’s in high gear, making big swings to get a laugh, feisty as hell, self deprecating. All this to say, he’s super entertaining and often steals the show. He’s equally as entertaining on the game mess shows, and sometimes even more off the rails, but you see a different side of him. Oftentimes he’s more relaxed, more chill. It's during these shows where Mike and Jeff’s friendship is most apparent. They have such a great rapport that becomes all the more obvious on these shows. A chemistry that I've seen before with Jeff and Ryan, Vinny and Brad, Dan and Drew, even Greg Miller and Colin Moriarty a million years ago before colin left KF to become a full time contrarian dipshit.  I’ve been a regular listener to the bombcast again for a few years now. But even on weeks I miss the bombcast, I almost always catch at least part of one of the game mess shows. 

The new giant bomb had quite a streak going. Soon it became my main source of video game nonsense. And just like I had at the beginning, I started wondering and worrying about how the site was doing. YT viewcounts were modest but on the upswing. Every blue moon they had an IG reel or tik tok that took off. And they were redeveloping a dedicated following. Things were looking good. But unfortunately giant bomb was a small but very robust property with talented, entertaining staff and a passionate audience. And that only makes sense at certain times and situations. And under the umbrella of a large corporation, it will only make sense until somebody important sees the name on a balance sheet. 

I was grateful for the fact that these dudes were still doing it, still putting out great stuff after all these years. Still introducing the world to talented and entertaining folks like  Emma Fyffe, Bailey Myers, Niki Grayson, Shawn McDowell, etc. Against all odds, this crew was making me care about Giant Bomb in 2023, 2024, 2025. Care, and worry. Underneath the gratitude and enjoyment, one thought kept rearing its head: It’s gonna suck when this all gets shut down one day. 

“One day” loomed heavy for months. When Bailey was laid off, it was gutting. She continues to be my favorite recurring GB character to this day. She was in charge of a Fandom channel that did reasonably well, view wise, so if they were letting her go, it was a foregone conclusion that GB, or at least some of the crew, was on the chopping block. 

And truly, it felt strange that, through all the sales, all the cuts and culls, that the core crew remained as it was. You had to wonder why that was. I don't know shit about fuck, obviously, but I have the feeling that a big reason GB existed as long post CBSi is that Bakalar was the one at the helm, doing what he could to advocate for the site and to insulate them from the corporate bullshit as much as possible. There were some unfortunate casualties along the way, but Bakalar deserves a ton of credit for keeping the site alive for so long.

2024 went out on a high. The Game Awards red carpet show, with the giant submarine sandwiches, was a riot. As 2025 started, shit was weird. In the world and in GB. There were some “changes” to GB that were teased, and that never sounds good. It seems that muckety muck at fandom starting looking at GB and asking what the hell these dudes did all day.

It seems the powerblock or whatever it was called was probably a way of trying to give GB reason for being, a way to demonstrate that even if the audience isn’t huge, they’re dedicated and will engage with the streams throughout the week. And for what its worth, for the two weeks or however long the powerblock lasted was enjoyable. But then marvel rivals launched some gooner bait DLC with some thunder thighs or some shit, still not exactly sure what happened. But GB was iced. Not shuttered, just grounded. No live streams for the foreseeable future. 

Shit got pretty weird. Grubb and Mike still did their shows at night, they talked of frustrations and uncertainty but they were trying to be as diplomatic as possible, and didn’t say much that was concrete. Dan had no such reservations lol. He had some late night streams that went unarchived where he was very forthcoming about how much things sucked at fandom and how the people in charge were morons who didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. 

A lot of this was in coded language, but there was one stream where he let it all hang out. One kind soul (some may call them a narc, i disagree!) recorded the stream for posterity and when everything hit the fan, put it up on YT for our enjoyment. Prior to this though, there were reddit posts about it, including one that i should have realized was a red herring - Dan, after talking truthfully about the situation, asked the audience for semi realistic but fake scenarios that someone could post on reddit to troll the community - the next morning i read in disbelief about how dan did a shoot stream where he let it spill that fandom wanted to turn GB into a guides site. 

They did a pre-recorded bombcast, which can only be described as the greatest piece of lost media ever. They just took the piss out of fandom. The archive was up for only a few hours before they took it down. It was fucking hilarious to witness. They went out in a blaze of glory, scorching the earth in their wake. 

Shortly thereafter, a sad inevitability transpired that was as depressing as it was predictable. Mike Minotti went to disney world.  Shortly before that, though, Grubb sent out a skeet  announcing he was no longer with GB. THIS was the end of Giant Bomb, not as we knew it, but period.

There has never been a more consequential hire in games media than Jeff Grubb to Giant Bomb. The guy is a scoops machine. He’s funny, charming, and an all around good dude. Someone who has made it a goal to introduce as many up and coming industry folks to the GB audience as possible. And above all, that dude is a content machine. If Jan Ochoa is the brains of the giant bomb organism, Jeff Grubb is the skeletal system. Putting aside the fact that if Jeff Grubb was leaving, none of the other duders were going to stick around either; without Jeff Grubb, 2025 Giant Bomb just didn’t make sense logistically. 

The night after the announcement, he did a Game Mess podcast with a Minotti Brother filling in for Mike. He was still vague, didn’t MF anyone or any thing. The pod lasted over 3 hours. The GB/GM community came out in a big way with thousands of viewers donating thousands of dollars in super chats. This community really showed Grubb how much we love him and how ready we were to follow him wherever he went. 

It was clear though that something new would be coming out of these smoldering ashes. The ashes of a video game website that, at long last, had died. Its incredible how many spears can fit into the side of a gazelle before it finally croaks, you know? The GB community was going through a lot of feelings. Sadness that the website we loved was dead. Anger at the stupid Wiki company that killed it. Excitement for what was soon to come. And above all, a sense of finality. Having followed the site for over a decade, it was like a friend. At some point, the friend came down with an illness. Things looked grim, but they rebounded. Then a relapse occurred. Things settled back down. Then they got worse. A couple of times, they got really dire and it didn’t look like they were going to pull through, but at the last possible second, they kicked out. 

This cat had many lives. But the 9th was upon us, and time was out. After years of worrying about this day, it had come. At long last. Giant Bomb was dead. Long Live Giant Bomb <>.

Then the duders broke radio silence on bluesky. They all had the same identical skeet promoting a Pax East panel which was scheduled before everything went to hell. There was speculation abound, but my read was simple - They probably had some sort of contractual obligation to fulfill with PAX, and they were going to use the panel as an opportunity to do what nobody ever assumed would be possible when GB finally died - say goodbye. 

But as the panel drew nearer, it started to seem these duders had some shit up their sleeve. 

Lazarus. 

Grubb and Bakalar started the panel, just the two of them.  They talked about the whirlwind of a couple weeks they had leading up to the panel. And then they did it. They announced that they purchased Giant Bomb. The NWO music hit, the Dan and Jan came out, and they SHOCKED THE WORLD, BROTHER. 

What a fucking whiplash. I was ready for this thing to be dead, AGAIN, and somehow they managed to do the unthinkable. Its still not clear how they pulled this shit off, but they did it. And despite the emotional roller coaster, we were all excited to have them still standing. 

It took a number of months but after massive shows of support from the community, I have finally gotten to a place where I no longer worry about Giant. They seem to be as healthy as they’ve ever been. And the community seems in a good place too… 

There were some interesting times in GB fandom over the last few years. There was weirdness with the Nextlander Dudes’ departures. Weirdness when they launched their thing. A rift of sorts developed in the community, it basically amounted to Team Gerstmann vs Team Nextlander. There has been an undeniable strangeness to the whole thing. Personally I had a hard time with Gerstmann after the nextlander dudes left and it sorta only got worse after he departed. Gerstmann was Giant Bomb, but so were Brad Vinny and Alex. And GB transformed into a new thing when Minotti arrived. 

With Gerstmann, I always got this sense of underlying hostility from him with regard to some of the other GBECU. I’m certain in hindsight this is projection on my part. I say all this because, when GB had their first summer games fest couch thing post Maylo, it meant the world to me as a fan for Jeff to come on the stream. The founder had come home to the site he founded. There was some awkwardness to it, but it was sorely needed closure for me as a fan of GB and of Jeff’s, and I hope it was closure for him as well. 

There is still some amount of unspoken strangeness between the NXL guys and Gerstmann, with some signs of that having gotten better over time. Regardless of who is listed on the wikipedia page as “founder,” these four dudes BUILT the thing. They all deserve their flowers for what they built. 

And I'm thankful that they’re all still doing their own thing. For as much as things suck about the modern internet, and the world as a corollary, a minor positive is that it makes it possible for small creators to do their thing in a sustainable way. There exists a world where when the various GB duders departed, we never heard from them again. In a different era of the internet, that’s exactly what happened with the OG Gamespot diaspora in the mid 200’s. But we live in a world where Vinny, Alex and Brad can do their own thing. Jeff can do his thing. Danny O’Dwyer can do his thing. Patrick, Austin, Mary, Mahardy, all can do their own thing. 

And despite all odds, we live in a world where not only does Giant Bomb still exist. It’s still worth following. Despite its myriad changes, it still maintains an intangible quality that has been present throughout its existence, something that makes it recognizable as Giant Bomb. It is still here and it iss independent, and therefore untethered from capitalist vultures who don’t see the utility in the continued existence of something like Giant Bomb. 

We live in a world where Giant Bomb persists, and it acts as a center of gravity for the extended Giant Bomb Cinematic Universe. While all the duders emeriti are off doing their own thing, Giant Bomb acts as a thing that occasionally sees them come into its orbit. Vinny may occasionally appear at a live event. Abby may star in a premium feature here or there. Gerstmann might stop by the couch during SGF. Drew may one day hop on the Dump Truck. Mary can pal around with our own Tolkoto. And Bailey will still steal the show whenever she’s on stream. 

Giant Bomb Lives. Long Live Giant Bomb. Happy Maylo. <>