Not surprised in the slightest. Expected even, but never wished upon (and definitely hoped I was wrong, since Monty Oum's Dead Fantasy series is officially hosted there!). When Defy Media exchanged their shares to Viacom and acquired GameTrailers in return, everybody figured this could work since Defy Media also owns The Escapist. And then they fired the majority of staff (calling them layoffs, yet replacing them with Defy Media's own staff), including Daniel Kayser (GT.TV), Amanda MacKay (GT.TV), and Michael Damiani (Pop Fiction and Retrospectives). The only real core GT staff that could stay was co-founder Brandon Jones (aka the voice of GT), Daniel Bloodworth, and Kyle Bosman (who is a recent addition to the staff). With the majority of GT's unique content completely thrown out (Pop Fiction, Pop Facts, Pach-Attack, Retrospectives, GT.TV, Bonus Round, Invisible Walls, Annoyed Gamer), fans were practically screaming on Twitter to warn those guys to jump ship and not to trust Defy Media after the damage they've done on their first day. Don't get me wrong, The Final Bosman with Kyle Bosman isn't a bad show, but if that's the only noticeable unique show GT has to offer on top of their 100 point score reviews and previews, then there's really no reason to care about GameTrailers anymore. Its soul is completely ripped out and replaced with a generic staff to produce generic content. What gave GT its identity was erased by Defy Media's hands. Again, this is weird, considering they didn't do this for The Escapist. But it happened, and in my eyes, their shutdown was inevitable since there's no way I can see any further sustained interest in the eyes of the audience when GT loses its identity.

But let's face it. Jobs are hard to keep, so when you aren't part of the "layoffs" you keep the job and pay the bills. So of course when given the offer to stay at GameTrailers, all core members said yes. And now they're all looking for new work in this abrupt shutdown. And I can definitely say abrupt because Daniel Bloodworth got married last Saturday, and he's still at his honeymoon when this happened. Defy Media sure knows how to give the worst wedding gifts.

I don't agree when everybody said don't sell GameTrailers to Viacom. I felt Brandon Jones could only run the site for so long on his own (I think the other co-founder left early?), he needed the support of SpikeTV, etc. How else do you get someone as high profile as Geoff Keighley to work with your business? I DO agree that when Defy Media nuked everything, Brandon should've jumped ship and gathered all former staff to do a new competitive site, assuming there is no non-compete clause in their terminations. Shane Satterfield had the perfect timing to jump ship and spend time building a new business (instead of hitting the ground running like everyone is now). That said, I don't think Shane saw this coming, and it's more of a coincidence that his timing was perfect. Not sure how successful Shane's business is since it's kind of barebones right now, but at least he got Michael Pachter to continue his show there (renamed to Pachter Factor, but the format is identical) so I guess one thing isn't completely killed off by Defy Media.


One last thing GameTrailers. Internet videos on games were not a revolutionary concept in 2002. Cyber Hippie Vision beat you to it more than 2 years ago, and these guys were not a large company, but rather a small gathering of gamers who made video podcasts before iTunes made podcasts a thing, captured and uploaded videos of video game cinematics before YouTube Let's Plays were a thing, TV commercials for games before trailers were a thing, etc. We didn't even have MPEG-4 encoders back then, it was all Quicktime and RealMedia since Windows Media Video was too large and poor quality at the time. Cyber Hippie Vision (CHV.net) was truly fitting of its name, seeing the potential in internet video long before IGN and Gamespot did. But sadly, as CHV staff are nothing but gamers who volunteer their time, they couldn't afford the demand and the server bandwidth got too expensive. From there, IGN and Gamespot took over with their bull$#!+ IGN Insider and Gamespot Complete subscription monstrosities (funny how we're okay with Twitch subscriptions now). You want ANY videos? Pay a monthly fee and THEN we'll let you see them. Since the only things available for the consumer market were digital camcorders and video cards with VIVO (Video In/Video Out), your options for capturing at decent quality were severely limited and expensive. Then there's the lack of a platform to host the videos.

That's where GameTrailers came in, and that's where GameTrailers deserve credit. They are a journalism site that doubles as a platform for various content creators to get their videos hosted in high quality. And the viewers have a site to watch all kinds of videos FOR FREE. So screw you IGN Insider and Gamespot Complete. GameTrailers smashed those subscription services away and made online videos much more accessible. And as GameTrailers is an actual business unlike Cyber Hippie Vision, GameTrailers was here to stay regardless of demand. Sure, they'll sellout sometimes (Verizon's 4G LTE fake review advertisement comes to mind), but they stay true to their vision that gaming videos should be readily accessible for internet consumption, and will do whatever it takes to afford the costs of running it.

If it weren't for GameTrailers, it would've taken us much longer to show the demand for online content as we didn't have a lot of platforms to publish media on for free. Shoutcast video was one I guess, but the setup there is difficult unlike modern platforms like YouTube, Justin TV which eventually became Twitch. Just know that Cyber Hippie Vision started the revolution, and it hurts for me to know they've fallen into such obscurity that Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on them, and the internet archive couldn't backup the site as the new owner of the domain blocked it from doing any archiving. Pretty much the only people who know about its existence are those who follow the site. I still remember their site being the best place to get a high quality City Escape scene from Sonic Adventure 2, or if you wanted the entire CG of Final Fantasy 7's ending.

And my best memory of GameTrailers? Aside from various Pop Fiction videos, I treasure the memory of Brandon Jones talking about Monty Oum's legacy and his contributions to GameTrailers through his Dead Fantasy series. Brandon clearly had a busy schedule, but he wanted to put aside a few hours to produce a quick video tributing the late Monty Oum. I can tell he was in a rush, because he didn't research on how to pronounce Monty's last name, and kept incorrectly calling him "Oom" numerous times in the video. Good times.

Well, Brandon Jones, Kyle Bosman, and Daniel Bloodworth, with your resumé it's not really a matter of finding a job, but rather a choice of what job you want now. I just hope the job you choose will still be online content related to gaming. I'm still waiting for Michael Damiani to create a new successor to Pop Fiction, but the lack of a large company getting him industry contacts will make it brutally difficult for him to have the credentials to interview game devs for secret information.

On a final thought, how the heck is Electric Playground still alive?! What does Victor Lucas do to stay alive on TV and the internet? What does Canada do that is different from the US?

*Checks website.*

Oh... G4 Canada dropped them as of the end of 2015... And now Victor is shopping the show to new networks to continue the show... Never mind then. They're screwed too. Also apparently the G4 brand still exists in Canada run by another company. Kind of like Hostess. Canada seems to get copies of brands without involving the original company. Not sure how they do that. Anyways, Electric Playground's website is still up, so at least I'll know where to look for the bad news if no networks pick them up. Seriously, EP Daily is like the last gaming show that still exists on TV, and because it's a Canadian production, that's an even... Smaller audience to work with. I watch them through their YouTube channel so regional restrictions aren't an issue with me.

Whew... A long retrospective of gaming sites and the people in it. I think my comment now doubles as an editorial reeking of ignorance and a disgustingly cocky atittude. Still fun to write.

Kind of felt this for awhile now, the site has been on a slow decline for years, web page redesigns have always been for the worse, their video player has been pretty bad for a long time, they had some great high production features until a few years ago when some parent company stuff happened, i'm not sure what took place but i know a lot of staff were let go and they lost the ability to create said content. They tried to fill the gap with smaller staff lead content but non of the staff except Brandon really clicked with me, that and the video player being outright broken for me since the site redesign made me stop visiting entirely.
It's been a long and tragic road, hope the staff involved land on their feet.

cikame:The following paragraph is the short version of what happened. You can ignore the other paragraphs as they're just repeats of what I said earlier.

Basically Brandon Jones sold GameTrailers to Viacom, which is why we had GT.TV/E3 coverage/VGAs on SpikeTV, the addition of Geoff Keighley, Daniel Kayser (he might have been on before Viacom I'm not sure), Amanda MacKay, etc. Anyways, Viacom then acquired shares of Defy Media, but in return had to sell GameTrailers to Defy Media. Defy Media are the owners of The Escapist website. You'd think they would do a good job right? Well... Defy Media decided to fire everybody on staff except for Brandon Jones, Daniel Bloodworth, two Michaels (Michael Damiani from Pop Fiction was given an extension of a few months, while a different Michael was kept on-board), and Kyle Bosman (who was a recent hire anyways). Defy Media decided to simply replace the entire staff with their own staff, because it's a brilliant move to kill every single show that made GameTrailers unique. So no more hosting third-party shows, GT.TV, Combat Facts, Pach-Attack, Pop Fiction, Retrospectives, Bonus Round, Invisible Walls, Annoyed Gamer, etc. Instead, all we have on GameTrailers with Defy Media is The Final Bosman, Reviews, Previews, and Trailer scoring. That's it. From there I imagine Defy Media was testing GameTrailers for a year, didn't get the results they wanted, and dumped it.

The fact that they decided to fire Michael Damiani, Daniel Kayser, and Amanda MacKay made me realize Defy Media had no idea what made GameTrailers popular. It's like buying out ScrewAttack, and then firing the Death Battle staff and cancelling that show. Instead of dealing with the technical issues that caused the site decline, they just murdered the bread and butter content that created the identity of GameTrailers that would've kept them on the radar.

So yeah, bottom line is Brandon sold GT to Viacom (dunno where the other co-founder went; he left long before Brandon sold to Viacom), Viacom sold GT to Defy Media, Defy Media gave them one year, didn't see improvement compared to Twitch and YouTube, and then threw it in the dumpster. I suspect the one-year probation was done in secret since GT staff isn't aware of this whatsoever. The announcement is sudden, and Brandon gave no hints of dangers on job security. Heck his latest tweets before the announcement was to review more trailers. Furthermore, Daniel Bloodworth got married last Saturday, and he got the news during his honeymoon. Defy Media sure knows how to give a good wedding gift.