and the press release from Fandom, which previously owned them for some reason:

San Francisco, CA - May 10, 2025 - Fandom, the world’s largest fan platform, is selling Giant Bomb to long-time Giant Bomb staff and gaming content creators Jeff Bakalar and Jeff Grubb. Financials of the deal were not disclosed. Giant Bomb’s programming, which was paused in order to work out the terms of this deal, will resume as quickly as possible. More details will be communicated soon by Giant Bomb’s new owners.

Statement from Fandom

“Fandom has made the strategic decision to transition Giant Bomb back to its independent roots and the brand has been acquired by longtime staff and content creators, Jeff Bakalar and Jeff Grubb, who will now own and operate the site independently. Fans are at the core of everything we do at Fandom and we’re committed to not only serving them but also supporting the creators they love, and the sale of Giant Bomb represents a natural extension of that mission. We’re confident Giant Bomb is in good hands and its legacy will live on with Jeff and Jeff.”

Joint Statement from Jeff Bakalar and Jeff Grubb

“Giant Bomb is now owned by the people who make Giant Bomb, and it would not have been possible without the speedy efforts of Fandom and our mutual agreement on what’s best for fans and creators. The future of Giant Bomb is now in the hands of our supporting community, who have always had our backs no matter what. We’ll have a lot more to say about what this looks like soon, but for now, everyone can trust that all the support we receive goes directly to this team.”

the website: https://onemillionchessboards.com/

What you mean? Have you seen all those articles publisher website just giving out 8-9 on every damn game they get early access to?

this has been an issue people have complained about in gaming journalism for–and i cannot stress this sufficiently–longer than i’ve been alive, and i’ve been alive for 25 years. so if we’re going by this metric video gaming has been “ruined” since at least the days of GTA2, Pokemon Gold & Silver, and Silent Hill. obviously, i don’t find that a very compelling argument.

if anything, the median game has gotten better and that explains the majority of review score inflation–most “bad” gaming experiences at this point are just “i didn’t enjoy my time with this game” rather than “this game is outright technically incompetent, broken, or incapable of being played to completion”.

no, obviously not; is this a serious question? because i have no idea how you could possibly sustain it

the going theory is that this is effectively the western division of NetEase getting axed because they’re not important enough and “cost too much” to keep around

resetERA is an unusual source for this, but the OP is just direct screencaps off of LinkedIn of people saying they were laid off, and it’s hard to get more definitive than that in terms of sourcing

it’s very funny because at the absolute most this maybe saves like, what, two steps in the best case? AI is so bad at this stuff that you have to human-edit it into something that looks good most of the time anyways

take a week off, you were told the issue politely and this is not an acceptable way to respond

Kind of annoying to have to click the damned link if the text can just be in the body of the post. What, do you work for PC gamer?

no offense but why are you on a link aggregator (and a clone of Reddit in particular) if you’re averse to clicking links? that’s literally the point of this form of social media: emphasis on sharing interesting links from other places, with the expectation that you’ll follow them.

in any case we strongly discourage the practice of copying the entire article because it’s technically copyright infringement, we generally expect people to actually engage with what’s posted instead of drive-by commenting, and it’s just generally bad form to rob writers of attention and click-throughs for their work.

i mean if Roblox is any indication, Valve will probably bend the knee sooner or later. government scrutiny is obliging them to make changes and actually do even basic moderation over there:

The fast-growing children’s gaming platform Roblox is to hand parents greater oversight of their children’s activity and restrict the youngest users from the more violent, crude and scary content after warnings about child grooming, exploitation and sharing of indecent images.

The moves comes after a short-seller last month alleged it had found child sexual abuse content, sex games, violent content and abusive speech on the site. In the UK, Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, told parliament: “I expect that company to do better in protecting service users, particularly children.”

RTFA before replying

one thing i’d be interested in: is it possible to make a fun 4X-style game that challenges the very premises of 4X (which are mostly patterned after the models of expansion we’re familiar with in the West)?

Dystopika (Steam, Windows) is a city builder in maybe the strictest definition of that two-word descriptor, because it steadfastly refuses to distract you with non-building details. The game is described by its single developer, Matt Marshall, as having “no goals, no management, just creativity and dark cozy vibes.” Dystopika does very little to explain how you should play it, because there’s no optimal path for doing so. Your only job is to enjoy yourself, poking and prodding at a dark cyberpunk cityscape, making things that look interesting, pretty, grim, or however you like. It might seem restrictive, but it feels very freeing.

With approximately 600 members, Activision Quality Assurance United-CWA is the largest group of union-represented workers at any U.S. game studio. Workers in the new unit are located in California, Texas, and Minnesota. Over 1,000 video game workers at Microsoft now have union representation with CWA.

this is very cool, and hopefully more workers leverage the Microsoft neutrality agreement.

today is apparently just a bloodbath day in gaming generally. Deck Nine is also laying 20% of its staff off, and esports company ESL Faceit Group is laying off 15%

according to Jason Schreier:

PlayStation plans to close its London studio, which was responsible for several recent VR games.

Among other divisions, the layoffs will hit Insomniac (Spider-Man), Naughty Dog (The Last of Us), and Guerrilla (Horizon), three of PlayStation’s most successful subsidiaries

would you believe me if i told you this is Bloober’s first attempt at combat

i think it’s very clear now that the lack of unionization in the gaming industry will need to change, or every year or two or whatever arbitrary interval we’ll see an astronomical number of people losing their jobs all at once in this way.

i am aware of what a mod is and literally used it at you in reply–what you call them, however, has no relevance at all to my point. you’ve earned the thread’s first 3 day ban for your unnecessarily weird attitude about this.

ask any old-timer fanfiction writer about this. “fan work” as a whole–including mods–is a gigantic gray space in current copyright law and IP holders are almost certainly within their technical legal rights to prohibit any works like Revolution on a blanket basis. the current arrangement where most rightsholders look the other way and/or accept the existence of such fan works is a largely informal one, and there’s nothing codifying it being that way. it could arbitrarily change (or just be fucked up by a court case) at pretty much any time–and, indeed, occasionally rightsholders still do try and enforce their IP quite aggressively.