Giant Bomb

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the previous week.

An important announcement about site programming is that for those of you that missed it, Grubb's "Grubb Bag" feature this week was one of a handful of selectable options for their streaming content on the site and people voted for it to be one of his contributions this week. Voting for future programming will possibly take place in the "Premium-General" section of the Giant Bomb Discord.

Giant Bomb will be participating in the Hard Drive Presents: A Woke And Gay Charity Stream but the game they play for this charity effort is currently up to a community vote. You can find the ballot on the Giant Bomb Discord in the "News" section. Currently, it sure seems like Mike will be playing The Lion King on the SNES.

In terms of updates about the site, we should address a topic that seems to keep coming up. Due to the program's staffing, Giant Bomb will no longer be hosting JeffJeff's Bizarre Adventure. The podcast has resumed, but it's offsite and you will likely need to subscribe to a new Spotify or Apple Podcast feed rather than the RSS Free or Premium Feed on Giant Bomb.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the previous week!

Come one, come all, and marvel at the results of Giant Bomb's Top 10 Games of the 21st Century community activity! Many thanks to @marino for compiling the stats and parsing the data all the way down to the 100th most picked game on a single handy and beautifully formatted article. If you want all of the dirty details beyond even that, feel free to check out their article.

Wow! Y'all really showed up for this fun little vote. A total of 3171 people submitted ballots containing 2164 different games for their Top 10 Games of the 21st Century. To put that in perspective, that's SEVEN TIMES the amount of entries we received for the Giant Bomb Game of the Year 2024 community vote.

The scoring system is based on a weighted system where your #1 is worth more than your #2 and so on. I don't actually know what the math is on that because this "Community List" feature is built into the site. When the deadline hits, it just spits out a report, which I transcribed here and try to make look somewhat pretty.

The tie breaker on weighted scores is the total number of votes received.

Before I give you a big ol' list and some stats, let's slow roll the Top 50.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the previous week.

Well, let's not bury the lede here. The biggest news this week and even this month comes with the announcement that in the transition towards full staff ownership the team at Giant Bomb is making a new website. As indicated in that announcement article, parts of the current site that they plan to preserve are:

We're very excited to announce that we are in the process of building a new website. We believe the site is integral to the culture of Giant Bomb, and we want to reinvest in it as a platform for the community and to continue facilitating the weird stuff we do here.

We are committed to continuing and maintaining:

• The full backlog of video content
• All podcasts and feeds
• Articles and reviews
• Forums
• Livestream pages (ad free for premium subscribers)
• ...and the Wiki!

Other features of the site: TBD, but no matter what we will try to maintain your access to your written content.

We are targeting a August '25 Premium-Only Beta for the site, and an end of year full launch.

Chucktowski has been working with us on all things IT, and he is spearheading the site rebuild and will be managing the wiki rebuild effort. Feel free to reach out to him anytime!

VOTE HERE!

VOTE HERE!

VOTE HERE!

People were selecting and sharing their top ten movies of the 21st century this week, so let's bring the Giant Bomb Community together to do the same here for games. It's a task that you might find harder than you think. If you have a Top 10 list for every year already, you're going to have to whittle down 250 games to just 10!

If you haven't already clicked the VOTE HERE links and need some more details, here are some FAQs:

How long do I have to do this?

• Voting is currently scheduled to end on Thursday, July 3 before the long weekend.

What games can I pick?

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the previous week!

The single biggest piece of site-related news stems from Giant Bomb needing to change how payment processing works. As explained over here, as part of becoming independent, the staff needed to form a new LLC (Jeffinitely) to accept payments that go directly to them. Unfortunately, some banks are rejecting payments to this LLC. So, any of you that have a premium auto-renewal coming up might need to be more vigilant if things go through alright. If not, send an email to support@giantbomb.com or head on over to #site-tech-issues on the Giant Bomb Discord and ping Chuck or Rorie for help.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site and staff-related news and best community creations!

This week provided the staff with some much-needed R&R after they absolutely killed it during Not-E3 2025! Now, I know during some of the livestreams that Giant Bomb aired during this time many people experienced audio issues and buffering. While I have included the whole unedited versions of the night streams, Jan and company recommend you find the slightly edited segmented videos on YouTube of Giant Bomb @ Nite as they are likely to be slightly better listening experiences. Regardless, here's everything Giant Bomb aired during that highly eventful weekend to make everyone's life a little bit easier.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the previous week!

Not-E3 2025 is here and the Giant Bomb staff are running a lean and mean operation down in LA. Your patience and understanding as Jan works his butt off behind the scenes with the set-up and Grubb, Bakalar, Dan, and others nab the strong bevy of guests you'd want, is greatly appreciated.

GB@Nite will continue tonight June 7th at 5:00 PM PT. The end time is anyone's guess. Following the 7th, Giant Bomb will have a talk over for Microsoft's Press Conference on June 8 at 10am PT but they will not continue into Microsoft's special streaming event for The Outer Worlds 2. You can catch all of the fun on YouTube or Twitch. Again, a great deal of thanks to everyone who made Giant Bomb even covering SGF 2025 possible.

To call the challenge of doing this "tough" feels like an understatement. But as I have said before, Giant Bomb Forever, and hopefully Grubb won't actually follow through on murdering Dan live on camera and let's not forget that FRIDGE CAM IS BACK BAYBEE!!!

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the previous week.

Now, let's not dance around it, the big talking point this week is all about Giant Bomb's Summer Game Fest plans (a.k.a. Not-E3 2025). Presently, GB@Nite is happening, but things are still being planned, discussed, and organized as we speak. I know that some of you noticed that during UPF Dan was joking about "adding a third night" due to all the calls he's getting from people wanting to be on the couch. Just be aware, plans can change. Things are a little bit different this year for obvious reasons.

What is quickly taking shape are the planned conferences for that summer week. Many thanks to @marino for making an incredibly handy Not-E3 2025 Time Zone Chart™ article, but if anyone wants to save the direct link to the chart, here you go. Also, feel free to drop comments to any recently announced conferences that are not on the sheet or date/time updates.

E3 is long dead. Is Kentia still a threat? We may never know.

But, that ain't stoppin' these presentations, showcases, press conferences, developer directs, or whatever the hell else they're calling these things these days. A week from right now, Geoff Keighley will be telling you about some type of WORLD PREMIERE, so put your Switch 2 down and get your leaf blowers ready. It's a mess, so I'm here to keep track of it for you. I will keep this updated as best I can.

Here's what we know so far:

• HERE IS A LINK TO THE SHEET IF YOU WANT IT! - tinyurl.com/notE3chart

If you don't like colorful charts, here's a basic text rundown:

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the week.

After publishing last week's Spotlight, I had a slight fear that activities with the community and site would dip back to where they were before Giant Bomb went independent, but am happy to report that things are almost as busy as they were last week!

First, let's talk about customer support and technical issues with the site. You can report any and all problems you have with the site itself and its usability to support@giantbomb.com. If you have merchandise issues or problems with your premium subscription, consider pinging Rorie (mrorie) on the "site-tech-issues" channel on the Giant Bomb Discord. He's currently helping the staff in those two areas for a bit. You can also consider creating a thread on the Bug Reporting board with any new issues but consider @-ing @chucktowski in your post to get a response. Also, don't forget to check out the Giant Bomb FAQ to see if your problem or issue hasn't already been addressed. If it hasn't please consider dropping a reply and I'll see if I can't get a response soon.

Detanglement between Giant Bomb and Fandom is progressing and the staff would like to thank everyone who offered their time to help in that process. Luckily, Will Carle, the former director of website engineering of CBSi who led multiple site revisions of Giant Bomb and its backend, has agreed to consult and assist with getting the site fully independent.

Well, this is awkward. After swearing I wouldn't be back, here I am and ready to say a sentence I think you all have heard me utter for over fifteen years. For once, it feels genuinely empowering to say, but... Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the last week.

As you all likely know by now, Giant Bomb is a wholly independent gaming site with Jeff Bakalar and Jeff Grubb buying Giant Bomb from its previous owner, Fandom. The web site itself has a long way to go from being completely independent from Fandom, and there are still many hurdles for the staff to face, but here's what I can say. Whatever happens, we can all rest assured things happened on Giant Bomb's terms and the vibes as they presently stand just feel good.

First, let's talk about the importance of supporting the site from this point forward. Giant Bomb needs you more than ever. As per Dan, Giant Bomb is no longer going to use Premium as a gate blocking content or features on the site. Instead, it will be a way for you to be a supporter of the site and provide you with an easy way to keep this team together. If your premium is already maxed out, consider donating to the site's newly christened Ko-Fi page, subscribing or gifting subs on Twitch, or (soon) taking advantage of YouTube super chats when they are available. Here are some links if you need them:

Subscribe

After over a decade of corporate ownership, Giant Bomb will now be truly independent. We don’t work for a corporation anymore, we work for you (please let us know where to send our PTO requests and expense reports). We're not serving an algorithm or executives, we're serving you, the audience. We want to lean into what’s always made Giant Bomb special, and that’s the people you see and hear on our content, and our extremely passionate community.

Here comes the part that you’re probably expecting!

We want your money. We need your money. Give us money. But for real, this is a big risk we’re taking and keeping Giant Bomb alive is going to rely on the support of the community. As an independent entity now, we can say that all support that we receive from you will go directly towards maintaining and growing Giant Bomb and paying the fine folks that you see on our programming week after week.

Everyone, this all sucks. There's no other way to put it. I don't know what the future will hold for Giant Bomb. I honestly don't. I can tell you where you can support the people who are definitely not here anymore and summarize publicly available information. Nonetheless, this is one of the most difficult editions of the Spotlight I have ever written. I hope you all understand that the gaps in my reporting or errors I make from here on out are not malicious attempts to cover things up or redirect the community's present anger. I just don't know everything; in some cases, I know just as much as you do.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the last week.

However, there's no doubt about what we need to discuss today. As many of you will see, there's no "Power Block" section on this edition of the Community Spotlight. Also, the site's streaming schedule has come to a noticeable halt. As Grubb indicated at the introduction of episode #395 of Game Mess Decides, a boss' boss got a new boss and they have ordered a temporary cessation of live streaming on Giant Bomb and GameSpot. This directive is indeed temporary, but it does impact plans for the week of April 28th. During that week, Grubb and others can promise the Bombcast will still air next week and that they have been working on a slate of video programs in case this order doesn't change.

The staff have been vague about what the future holds largely due to the powers that be being unclear. The good news is that Jan has stated "We ain't done yet," and Dan has maintained "Nothing will stop Blight Club." I have also been assured by the Community Manager that the site itself is "safe" and I know them to be someone who would never lie about something like that.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the last week!

As we look back at all of the wonderful things Giant Bomb and GameSpot did this week, please be aware that scheduling conflicts made a dent on some of the original programming. For example, there was no UPF and other days had their programming schedules cut short. The staff are working on cool things behind the scenes, and hope to bring you the fruits of their labor very soon.

Regarding the site itself, another major fix dropped on the site to address the site video player. If you are still having issues, please drop a comment over here. However, it does appear that disabling uBlock Origin and most ad blockers has been fixing a lot of, if not all of, the issues people are reporting.

In general, @dtoast, the site engineers, and myself are having issues replicating video player problems following the most recent site update. As a result, some people still experiencing issues are encouraged to reach out via support@giantbomb.com or the site's Zendesk ticketing system. As part of your bug report, please try to include a screen recording, screenshots, the title of your non-functional video, a list of extensions you use with your browser, and your browser version.

Welcome to the latest edition of he Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the important site-related news and best community creations from the previous week!

First, I want to thank all of you that tuned in an donated during the 2025 Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run! The group overall raised $3,645 towards Pencils of Promise, an educational charity that trains teachers and builds schools in Cambodia, Laos, and Guatemala. If you missed the event and are interested in donating, feel free to pick any of the team members on the page I linked previous and donate what you can to their page. Also, if you are interested in joining in the future, feel free to use the announcement thread for this year's event. The event tends to take place during the first or second weekend of April and team captain @thatpinguino is always happy to add new team members to the Discord.

As reported last week, a fix recently dropped to address multiple reports that the site's video player was not working. If you are still having issues, drop a comment over here as the engineers are struggling to replicate the issue. It does seems like some people have reported that the issue goes away after they disable uBlock Origin, which you may or may not be open to trying yourself. Regardless, @dtoast has confirmed that addressing video player issues remains a top priority.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the previous week.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the last week.

It's been a mostly positive week for Giant Bomb with a bevy of new streams and programming, but we do need to start the Spotlight off on a slight downer. Some people on the Giant Bomb Discord have indicated that they can't seem to click play on videos on the site anymore, even after enabling performance cookies. As you know, this issue was worked on for a long time and was largely resolved a few months back. If the issue has cropped back up, feel free to drop a comment here or in the State of the Site article I linked to and share your issue. Trust me, @dtoast is not happy to hear that the black screen issue may have returned.

Moving on to more positive things, don't forget that next weekend is The Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run, the spring-time community-led charity fundraiser! If any of you are available to stream from April the 4th through Sunday April 6th, please consider joining the GBCER team! We have since been able to recruit a few people from the Giant Bomb Discord, but any additional warm bodies, even if it is for just a few hours, would be great! The charity this year is for Pencils of Promise, an educational charity that builds schools, trains teachers, and develops clean water sources in Ghana, Guatemala, and Laos!

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the last week.

After a slight delay, there's finally a thread up with all of the information about Giant Bomb's current streaming schedule, which is known as the "Power Block". If you have any thoughts or concerns about the current programming, feel free to drop a comment and I will try to send your feedback to the appropriate channels.

Also, the complete uninterrupted VODs for the POW Block streams are going to be coming out a lot more reliably in the future, but there is a special note about the Friday show. As the staff often leave at the end of streaming duties to start their weekend, the Friday show usually goes up on Monday. Nonetheless, here's what I think is everything that aired on Giant Bomb and GameSpot this week in one handy list:

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look at the site-related news and best community creations from the last week.

First, lets all give a huge round of applause to the Giant Bomb, GameSpot, and Fandom staff that made the last week of streaming possible!

As you may have heard, the current collaboration of streaming content between Giant Bomb and all of its affiliate sites is moving forward as the "Power Block" or "Pow Block" format. As explained on this GameSpot article, from Monday to Friday, starting at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET each day and running until around 2 PM PT / 5 PM ET, you will get hours of Giant Bomb and GameSpot content. As I mentioned last week, Game Mess Mornings is being renamed "GameBreaking News" though the content and scope of the feature remains the same. I also want to say I was hoping to have a thread on the site with info about the Pow Block news, but I had a crazy week of work and just didn't have the time. The places to catch all of this is:

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the previous week.

And holy crap, the staff really started this week swinging and didn't let up. As you can see in my weekly programming list below, we had a whopping 16 shows, livestreams, and podcasts and at least two new features (i.e., GB Kidz and Ryckert's Roulette) that will be recurring fixtures moving forward. Likewise, for those of you that might be missing sets or in-person content, give the GameSpot cross posts a shot as they even have a couch! Regardless, join me in giving a hearty round of applause for the staff for making this happen.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the past week!

Well, this week the most significant news item worth discussing isn't exactly the most surprising one. This week marked the start of the new effort for Giant Bomb to share and host cross-collaboration content with other sites, in particular, GameSpot. Many thanks to the likes of Tom Caswell and others for their time and all of the hard work they did this week.

As Dan put it best on the Giant Bombcast 879 and chucktowski transcribed to a Reddit post, everything that is being done to be complimentary to Giant Bomb's current programming schedule. The current programming that you are enjoying right now isn't being cancelled and the hope is to just have longer blocks of uninterrupted streaming content. Also, Giant Bomb getting cross-posted on GameSpot has already shown to be incredibly assistive in getting the word out about the great stuff being done by the staff with most editions of Game Mess Morning netting thousands of extra views on their account.

The staff plans to have a better and more public streaming schedule and the only real "change" is that Game Mess Mornings is changing names and this is a change Grubb wants. An example of what is planned for the first full week of this is:

Monday 03/03/25 streams:

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the past week!

So, this week, a wide swath of the Giant Bomb staff were either out sick, injured, or recovering from surgery. If you want a hint on how bad Dan's sinus surgery went, here you go. So, many thanks to the staff at GameSpot that filled in this week.

Speaking of GameSpot, this week marked the soft launch of something that has been in the works for a while. You may have noticed more Giant Bomb content on GameSpot as well as Fandom. For example, GameSpot has the live stream of Grubb playing Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii on top of Giant Bomb hosting it on its own YouTube account. There's really nothing nefarious about what's going on here as I feel like I've been talking about Giant Bomb working with the other sites for ages. The extra warm bodies allows the staff to cover more content and cross-posting live streams and videos increases their reach and impact. Nothing is being subtracted from Giant Bomb's normal programming unless it is a convention or major gaming-related event. Grubb is excited about some of the ideas and things the site has in the works. While I can't share exactly why, I can say that I'm right there with him.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-elated news and best community creations from the week!

It was a quiet week from the Giant Bomb community, but I have yet to let that be an excuse to miss publishing one of these.

The anti-spam IT ticket I mentioned last week should be live. Presently, the site should be auto-blocking or nuking a post or comment if the content contains greater than 70% links. They also are going to set the site's filters to nuke the post/comment if the content contains greater than 50% alternative unicode characters (e.g. 𝙴𝚡𝚙𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚊 𝚘𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚛𝚜... vs Expedia offers...)." If you notice anything that fits both of those criteria that wasn't deleted quickly, please take a screenshot and share it in the "Bug Reporting" boards.

Bluesky embed support is moving into early testing. Engineers are testing a modified version of the editor that supports Bluesky, so if you notice embeds suddenly working for you one moment and then that suddenly stops, that's your sign they are doing some interesting experiments with the site. Full disclosure, a majority of the site engineers are located in Poland, which is part of the reason why site updates happen at EU-friendly hours. They are aiming for full Bluesky embed support by the end of February or early March barring any technical issues. Also, in my meeting with a Fandom rep, they did admit that they were annoyed that image dragging and dropping on the site did not work by default and wanted that to not be the case in the future.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the previous week.

First, thanks to the incredible efforts of a handful of people on the Giant Bomb Discord (i.e., @chucktowski, @alwaysbeclothing, and more) there's a new fan-run Giant Bomb Infinite alternative on Twitch called GiantBombForever for everyone to enjoy! GiantBombForever brings back a 24/7 stream of Giant Bomb videos, including voting and has a closely monitored Twitch chat that is welcoming all frequenters of the old Infinite chat. Also, thanks to Jan and Dylan, I was able to create a playlist on YouTube that has every single classic Giant Bomb Infinite bumper or transition.

On a technical note, the engineers are working on new filters and auto-ban tools that hopefully make a dent on the recent influx of spambots. Right now they are testing a filter that blocks or automatically nukes a post or comment if the content contains greater than 70% links. They also are going to set the site's filters to nuke the post/comment if the content contains greater than 50% alternative unicode characters (e.g. 𝙴𝚡𝚙𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚊 𝚘𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚛𝚜... vs Expedia offers...)." If you notice any comments or threads that fit those criteria and are still up, feel free to let me know or @ me in the thread in question and I can share a screenshot of it to the engineer in charge of dealing with the spam issue. So far, it's been catching almost everything the mod team and myself have been having to delete manually.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and the best community creations from the previous week!

We start this edition of the Spotlight with incredibly disappointing and unfortunate news. As many of you already know, Giant Bomb Infinite is being discontinued and retired. Infinite broke catastrophically and upon assessing what needed to be done to get back running, the costs became astronomical. I have hinted at this before, but Will Carle originally put Infinite on a machine they had in the office, and every few months the GPU would burn out on it from the strain of Infinite. This usually happened on the weekend, so he couldn't replace the GPU until Monday. The thing was burning cards in its original form. So, eventually, he put it on a virtual machine. And if it did crash from there you could reboot it at home. Unfortunately, server costs have jumped significantly especially with 24/7 video streaming. When Dylan offered to host Infinite on his own, the best option came to five figures per month (USD).

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the important site-related news and best community creations.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the site-related news and best community creations from the previous week! For those of you that have enjoyed Giant Bomb's previous live events and panels, the staff's PAX East plans have been officially announced via the PAX schedule and it looks like a back-to-back PAX panel on Friday night, March 22nd, at PAX East! The staff will be hosting a live in-person VMDT and then follow it up with Dandoko Dare live!

Noted Detroit sports fan Jeff Grubb made a guest appearance on the Remap podcast to talk about the Lions' miracle season and the absolute heartbreak of how their season ended. For those of you that enjoy the NFL, this is obviously right up your alley.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community creations and site-related news from the previous week!

It's weird to say this, but this week marks the 15th anniversary of the Giant Bomb Persona 4 Endurance Run! It is undoutedly one of the most important, foundational video series in the site's history. Feel free to chime in about still naming your video game protagonists "Charlie Tunoku" or watching the series a second or third time? Do you have a favorite moment? The "I looooove them balls" moment still gets me to this day!

First and foremost, let's give @pugtato a HUGE "THANK YOU" for shelling out the cash to get Brian Cox to record their now legendary Cameo for Mike Miquanchi. It's simply incredibly seeing what all of you goofballs are willing to do to show your love for this website.

Hopefully everyone enjoyed the latest travelogue entitled Catch Me if You Dan, but there were some people asking about the impromptu reaction stream that Jan organized where other staffers watched Dan's travel video for the first time. While this promotional stream will not be formally archived on the site or YouTube, you can still catch it on the Giant Bomb twitch account.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community creations from the last week.

First, as some of you are aware, multiple employees at GameSpot and Fandom were laid off last week. As Grubb and others have stated, these layoffs have not impacted any of the personnel associated with Giant Bomb, but some people let go were personal friends and associates to the staff. Please be considerate and reach out on social media to those still looking for help and support.

For reasons that are still unknown, notifications on Giant Bomb have been up and down. I actually had a meeting with the reps from Fandom last week and they indicated that previously, the notification system was busted across multiple sites and not Giant Bomb. This issue appears to be fixed, but feel free to let me or @dtoast know if it breaks again.

Speaking of that meeting, the topic of the video player came up and while I cannot divulge too much, I can affirm that resources and manpower is being relocated to address this problem. Likewise, while I cannot reveal everything, there are some ideas on how to get new traffic on the boards and site. I'm not going to say any of these ideas will get things back to a self-perceived "glory days", but it is something that's being discussed and will be tested in the future.

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community creations and site-related news from the previous week.

Another week in 2024 down; another week of devastating layoffs in the gaming industry. For those of you impacted by these cuts and corporate redundancy efforts, know that you are loved and deserve an industry that does not swallow you into a dysfunctional relationship.

As mentioned last week, Giant Bomb will be attending PAX East in 2024! The hope is to have at least two Giant Bomb-related panels, but things are still in progress. The new news this week is that Tamoor will be joining the Giant Bomb staff in attending the event.

Last week, someone asked about DICE and if there would be any coverage of the event on the site. I got word from Jan that Tam and Lucy are definitely going and will be chatting with folks. Maybe you will see some things from them, but that seems like the ceiling.

Earlier this week, some people were wondering if non-commercial use of Giant Bomb's API, especially for video apps, was being changed as per new management and I got a hard confirmation that the API policy hasn't changed. If you need your API key fixed or reset, contact support.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host as we look back at the best community creations from the last week as well as the site-related news!

After a slight notification hiccup, Niki Grayson's 2023 GOTY list is up on the site. It is a great read that you should all check out especially those of you that feel unfamiliar with them.

This week marked the season finale of JeffJeff’s Bizarre Adventure: The Cowboy Bebop Gaiden. Over on our sister-site, GameSpot, Tam and Lucy announced that their show Spot On was renewed for a second season. If you missed the first season of their roundtable show, here's a link to a playlist.

Giant Bomb will be attending PAX East in 2024! The hope is to have at least two Giant Bomb-related panels, but things are still in progress. Also be aware for those of you planning to attend, all PAX East 2024 attendees (including Enforcers, exhibitors, staff, etc.) are strongly suggested to wear a face mask at all times while at the show. You will not be required to wear a mask, nor will you be required to provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19.

It’s nuts that I’m writing a Game of the Year list. After getting laid off from Fanbyte last year, I kinda thought that I was done with these. Not in a bad way, mind you – but I thought that my window on having a voice about video games was closed.

I worked at Fanbyte for 3.5 years. I miss that website and team every day. I ran our internship program, which produced three incredible alums over the course of its run. A lot of what I tried to do with that program was answer big questions. Why does the industry work the way it does? Who are the people who you can trust? Who are the teams in this business that are doing the work in a way that is sustainable and healthy? There’s no playbook for working in an industry that is as diseased as this one. There isn’t one for working in video games either. To work at the intersection of those two things?

Good fuckin’ luck.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community creations from the week. But, let's talk about some site-related news first!

First and foremost, let's give a big round of applause for @marino for organizing and tabulating this year's edition of the Giant Bomb Community GOTY voting! The results are in and congratulations to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for taking first place after over 700 of you voted. You can see a lot more stats and details in Marino's results post.

The notification system on the site should be fixed! If you @ someone, they should get a ping/notification that you said something to them. You should also be getting updates about reviews, blogs, and lists your friends posted on the site!

@dtoast has an update on what steps he has taken to report and advocate for a quick remedy to the current issues with the site's video players. It's not a massive update, but they do want you to know that he continues to bring up the problems you are reporting in every meeting and continuing to file reports about problems helps him strengthen his case.

As the final piece of the 16th Annual Giant Bomb Game of the Year, we are here to review the results of the community's vote. Before we get started, I want to give a shoutout to @rorie for keeping this tradition going for the last seven years and to @thatfrood who took it upon himself to run the voting process on his own for many years before that.

Over 700 people voted this year for a total of over 6100 votes (not everyone fills out all ten slots). Within those 6100+ votes, 647 different games were named. Today, we're going to look at the Top 50.

Last year, Elden Ring straight up destroyed the competition with nearly triple the weighted score of God of War Ragnarök in second place. But, as you'll see below, this year's race was a little bit tighter.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the latest community creations from the previous two weeks and for the first time in 2024!

This weekend marks the end of Giant Bomb GOTY 2023 content on the site. If you have enjoyed the return of the Guest Lists, please send a HUGE "THANK YOU" to @marino! He put in hours of hard work editing lists and adding media to them to make them beautiful! So, if the return of guest lists brought you joy, thank him for transforming them from Word docs and emails to what you see today.

The Community GOTY results will be posted on Sunday as the true ending of GOTY 2023.

Speaking of which, Marino published a new blog that breaks down all of the cool stats associated with the Giant Bomb staff's GOTY lists as well as some fun stats associated with the guest lists. Did you know that both Grubb AND Jan made changes to their GOTY lists? Yep! Their lists are different from what they said in LA. Learn all about it by clicking that link!

Kenny Omega is one of the co-founders of All Elite Wrestling and has held more championships than you can count. He's @KennyOmegaManX on Twitter.

Austin Creed is a member of the 12-time Tag Team Championship-winning crew known as The New Day. He is also the host of the gaming YouTube channel UpUpDownDown. He's @austincreedwins on Twitter.

An introduction to me, Kevin Zuhn

Hey there! I’m Kevin Zuhn, the creative director and head writer at Young Horses Games. My notable work includes Bugsnax and Octodad: Dadliest Catch, which you’ve probably watched a steamer play at some point.

When it comes to games, I have a voracious appetite. By my count, in the year of 2023 I played over 170 games in total. How do I do it? I pretend it’s research!

But having played what my friends and coworkers call an ‘upsetting amount of games’ I find it harder than ever to narrow things down to a Top 10. After all, if I’d only played 10 games this year, the list would write itself! So this is me digging deep into what I love and what I find value in, and I hope that you find value in these games, too.

Triple-A Tentpoles!

Look, do you really need me to tell you that the biggest, most successful, and most beloved games of this year were good?

…You do??

Well alright, then.