this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
215 points (98.2% liked)

Games

39345 readers
1016 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 39 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 77 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"Mom! I want to read articles on Polygon!"

We have Polygon at home.

The Polygon at home:

Polgyon

[–] j0ester@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Plgyon is the Temu version of Polygon.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 57 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Giant Bomb also going through some shit right now. They just put up a podcast with a big middle finger to their new bosses, and it got pulled.

EDIT: Giant Bomb may be dead as of this afternoon.

[–] villainy@lemmy.world 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

The Giant Bomb Preservation Project still appears to be active so... at least there's that I guess.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Oh that's actually pretty sad to hear—I did not realise they had new owners

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] bishbosh@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Do you know what were the 'core values' of the new Fandom they betrayed?

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

If you listen to episode 888, you'll hear pretty quickly exactly why they got fired and why they thought it was important to do what they did.

[–] vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Fuck. Long time, first time. I'm a few episodes behind. Any additional info available? Links?

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Jeffool@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Copy that. Found a drop on archive.org. Planning to grab it when I'm back home. Cheers friend!

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Breaking news: Grubb seems to have been let go.

[–] vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

What the fuck.

[–] villainy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Awesome. Yet another reason to donate to the IA!

Edit: Grabbed episode 888 from IA. I'm only 10 minutes in and already these guys are going for it. I love this, fuck Fandom.

[–] savutano@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Let's be real, it has been dead for a while.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I fell off just post-pandemic, but I came back when Gerstmann left, and it was great for a long while again.

[–] savutano@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] savutano@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago

Their video content is pretty good.

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 41 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Kotaku: "sold to click-farm powerhouse Valnet"

That very same page: click-bair links after paragraph 1, paragraph 2, a top-anchored video link after paragraph 3, and an endless list of links at the bottom of the page. And that's with DNS ad-blocking and ublock. I'm curious what it looks like without, but I don't want to get tech-cancer.

Don't throw shit if you are also covered in it, Kotaku. I never really liked the site but I don't remember it being in this sad of a state...

[–] YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 month ago

That site just isnt the same anymore. It’s like being run by the mittani

[–] YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca 29 points 1 month ago

Layoffs is the precursor to adopting LLM generated content?

[–] HollowNaught@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Hmm, had to look up who these guys were

Apparently they own XDA and Android Police too, which haven't gone entirely to shit

I'll tentatively put the pitchfork away

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 31 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Mass layoffs, though. That doesn't usually presage a great time in a news site's life.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

No, not at all, generally not a good sign whatsoever (unless you're wall st apparently). I guess there's the chance it was particularly inefficiently staffed, but then Vox seem like they should have known what they were doing, so that doesn't seem likely.

The new owner seems to have a few gaming brands already, Game Rant being the only one I've heard of though. Perhaps they're planning a consolidation and this is the redundancy from that?

Not necessarily saying there's a silver lining, just trying to rationalise

[–] Aielman15@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The new owner seems to have a few gaming brands already, Game Rant

Isn't GameRant, like, 90% AI-generated clickbait content nowadays? Can't talk about what they were about a few years ago, but every time I find a GR article when looking for something, it's clickbait AI slop. Like "When will the sequel to X release? Everything you need to know" (scroll down to read post) "there's no confirmation about a sequel".

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

There's also a complete rehash of the Wikipedia article about the game, its release and reception, and maybe even a slideshow of memes before you get to the "No confirmation" part. And then a list of all the times the developers have said, "yeah, if they want to do another one, we'd take their money."

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

TBF it's not something I really read, just that I've heard of it. Though that's a pretty clear signal of what the future holds for Polygon then

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Looking through their portfolio, I honestly don't know how XDA and Android Police maintain their quality levels. Everything else is Taboola-level click farming junk.

[–] j0ester@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Damn! I never knew.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Aftermath is the only gaming site I really pay attention to anymore. I still have Kotaku and PCGamer in my RSS reader, but I don't really read any of their articles.

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Will GameInformer be the chosen one....?

[–] djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 month ago

I mean, GI already died and came back once, so maybe