GameTrailers gets bought out and most of staff gets layoff

Defy Media, who is a internet content publishers (The brands they own are Smosh,The Escapist,Break,Game Front,clevver, and more) has bought GameTrailers, Addicting Games, and Shockwave from Spike Tv.

Soon after the purchase, parts of the full time staff started getting layoff.

A Source has told Polygon that two-third of the full time staff have been layoff.

Here are tweets from well known employees:

My 10th #E3 complete, Friday the 13th and just got laid off from @Gametrailers," wrote Jeremy Hoffmann, formerly a producer for GameTrailers TV. Hoffmann added, "Great people @GameTrailers will be looking for jobs, we have editorial, video editors, tech managers & more looking for work. #gamejobs"

"Exciting times ahead for @GameTrailers and Defy. I just won't be part of it. Best of luck space cowboys," tweeted former director at GameTrailers, Ryan Stevens. Other layoff announcements have begun to appear on Twitter.

"Two weeks from now, I will be leaving @GameTrailers. Thank you for allowing me to talk about indie games again and for all the new friends," tweeted Rob Manuel, former producer at GameTrailers.

What do you guys think of this?

Soucre.

2# Source

Well best of luck to those who lost their jobs, hopefully they'll land back on their feet quickly. As for what this means for the product of Gametrailers I'm not really sure what to think but I did enjoy the shows that they'd have on Spike TV so I really miss seeing those.

@Archangel3371: Yea, hopefully those effected will do okay after this acquisition. My guess for the future of GameTrailers is that they will head towards a new direction of content. (Which is a shame because GT already has some solid content)

Yeah that would be a shame because like you said they do already have some good content.

Boo hoo.

Hmm, its always sad when people lose their jobs.

But to be honest i cant remember the last time i even heard about Gametrailers or spike tv so its not really a surprise that the new owners want to trim some fat and make it a more profitable business.

Considering that Defy Media already has a wide variety of sites that already cover video games and for some reason bought even more video game based sites, it is operationally and financially sound, almost inevitable, to lay off people in order to reduce redundancies (Seriously, how many reviewers do we need to review a single game?), mitigate the effects of cannibalization, and importantly, reducing expenses. It seems like Defy Media is trying to expand its video content front by taking over well known sites that are quite heavy on it, notably GameTrailers, but obviously don't need people behind them.

Name, data, and market share is enough to entice the company to go forward and buy and lay off people.

I really hope Kyle Bosman kept his job, it's the only reason left to visit that site

Yea, he confirmed that he still works there.

https://twitter.com/KyleBosman/status/477716986974072832

Thank god!

Damn. It's a shame but to be honest I haven't gone there in a long time. I do have a lot of fond memories of Invisible Walls and Bonus Round though.

I have been a longtime Gametrailers fan, but i started to notice a decline in the website after they got rid of Invisible Walls and Shane and Marcus left. Also, their commercials became more and more invasive, repetitious and downright disrespectful. I can understand running ad's before every video, but they were sometimes breaking up features into 3 parts (when it used to be one) and separating each part with a commercial (sometimes the same commercial every time). I refused to download adblock out of respect for the people who wrote and worked for gametrailers but it was clear that whoever was running the site just didn't give a ****. It doesn't surprise me that they sold out.

daaaaayuuum that sucks man :/ loved their reviews! but their forums where very biased.