Fandom sells gaming media brand Giant Bomb to long-term staff

For those unfamiliar, Giant Bomb was one of the first video games press outlets to focus on premium video content. They offered monthly/yearly paid subscriptions for unlimited streaming/downloads: a mix of livestreams, review/criticism content, and Just Goofing Around pre-recorded content. They typically released a few hours worth of content a week at their peak, if I remember right, and the cost was something like $30-50 a year. This was before long form video was a big thing on YouTube; arguably sites like Giant Bomb were pioneers that showed a path forward (at least temporarily) for lots of creatives.

Their podcast has been running weekly for the entire time the site has operated alongside (intermittently) other podcasts, so they're approaching 890 episodes. Each episode was typically a few hours long as well.

When they were doing good they were a well-oiled content machine operating on a small budget with a small team. A lot of the stuff they put out was really special or unique in games press at the time - for example, one of their staff went to North Korea during a vacation so during one of their weekly live streams they devoted a time slot to him showing his photos and talking about his experiences there.

The history of the site is wild, too. From the origin in the wake of Jeff Gerstmann being fired from GameSpot, the subsequent exodus from that site, to the death of Ryan Davis, to being bought by CBS Interactive and brought right back under the fold next to GameSpot, to being acquired by multiple other companies, to Jeff Gerstmann getting fired AGAIN, and now this. And all the fun times and weirdness and insanity along the way.

And a funny bit of trivia: likely the most widespread impact the site has had outside of gaming is that it was the origin of the "blinking white guy" meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb6BsegPewk

> to Jeff Gerstmann getting fired AGAIN

Hold up what? I didn't know that. It seems insane to fire the man from the organization he co-founded.

Once the VCs get involved you will soon find the company you founded is no longer the company you work at.