A Message from Your Friendly Corporate Overlord at Fandom, Now More Brand Safe!

Note: Shockingly, it appears that the earlier version of this was deleted without explanation. I would never suspect the mods of doing something like that, but I would suspect whatever thin-skinned dickhead is running things over at Fandom of demanding it, so this has been revised to be More Brand Safe!

Hello Giant Bomb Community,

You may have noticed some changes in the last few weeks, and I thought I’d take the time to let you all know that we hear you. Change can be scary, and we understand that completely! That’s why here at Fandom, we’re not just about fan wikis that are covered in ads and autoplaying videos that break the mobile viewing experience, we’re also about making sure the brands that you’ve come to know and love remain completely unrecognizable moving forward.

Look, I didn’t go to a fancy school and get an MBA without learning a few things about brands. The number one thing I know is that it is all about SEO, baby! I know this because I asked ChatGPT to tell me the most important thing about the internet, and that’s what it said. I also asked ChatGPT to explain to me what Giant Bomb was, and you know what it told me?

It’s about making sure that there is no weekly video content, ever. It is about just the one podcast, which will only go up if it does not hurt my feelings. It’s about never using swear words, and never mentioning things like “[redacted for brand safety]” or “[redacted for brand safety]” or “[redacted for brand safety],” anything that might make our advertising partners over at [redacted for brand safety] even a little uncomfortable! It’s about making sure that the Premium subscribers who have been around for over a decade can rest assured their dollars are going towards making sure we never hire anyone else on, and do our best to move the people who were full-time hires either get let go or switched over to contract work as soon as possible. That makes the numbers go up! I trust AI to tell me the truth all the time, which is why I make sure to tell it what I want to hear when I enter my prompts. This is an important skill that I picked up in Business School in between snorting copious amounts of cocaine and quoting Wolf of Wall Street at my classmates. Don’t worry though, I’m still a fan just like you. Why, I even used my millions of venture capital to show up at events wearing a Star Trek uniform! I’m just like you, except with more money and also zero clue what Giant Bomb is.

I can’t wait to show you what we have in store for the site in the future. We’re going to get rid of any of the regular features you’ve come to know and love: Blight Club? Too much swearing! Can’t have it! Game Breaking News? Who needs a daily digest of video gaming news, anyway. Plus, Jeff keeps bringing in all these “[redacted for brand safety],” and we don’t want to be accused of anything like “[redacted for brand safety]” here at Fandom. Can you believe he talked about the [redacted] in Palestine? I can’t stand when video games get [redacted for brand safety]. Instead, we’re overhauling the Giant Bombcast. It will be back and better than ever, with AI representations of all your old favorites, even Ryan Davis! We’re pretty sure we own the rights to his voice and likeness!

Sure, the POW Block may have been a great way for people to build a community and watch some people play and talk about video games every day, but have you also considered that it cost us money to do? If there’s one thing Business School taught me, it’s that you should never invest money into the thing you bought. You just extract as much money from the brand as you can and let it become gradually worse until there’s nothing left. Honestly, it’s like I’m the only adult in the room sometimes.

Most importantly, you have my solemn oath that I will not stop until I have managed to piss away every last drop of goodwill this site has earned over the seventeen years of its existence. Let’s all hold hands and stride boldy forward into the bright future* of Giant Bomb together!

Your Pal,

[redacted for brand safety]

CEO

*For me. I’m going to get a fat bonus for hitting my KPIs this quarter. You all are going to be left with nothing – we’re going to maybe let one engineer handle all the site maintenance until it becomes too expensive. Web storage? Who wants to pay for that, huh?