Dan (27:19)
And look at everyone that was working there when we were. When you were there as an intern. And they have gone off to like pretty much everyone that was there when you were there left prior to GameStop shutting it down and went out to Microsoft, went out to Sony, went out to like a million different places. They are all over. Yeah, they are all over the industry. And God, they really curated an incredible staff over the years. But before my time, during, after, man, that place was really, really fantastic. And yeah, Mike, you and I have the personal history there. Like without Game Informer, we don't meet. This podcast doesn't exist. I don't go to Giant Bomb, I don't meet Bianca. I don't. Tim Turi was my best man in my wedding. It's like friendships. The reason I moved back here were friends like Ben Hansen that, you know, like, it was, it was such a special place. It is the entire reason I do what I do and I've lived the life I live is because I subscribed when I was nine years old. So everyone knew this is how it ended, how it was going to end. You know, it was run by GameStop. GameStop's days were numbered. I remember when I got hired in 2009, I remember thinking like picturing that doomsday clock and being like, okay, we're a couple minutes to midnight here. Hopefully I can get my shit in and get a resume. You know, enough time here to actually, you know, like, brag about working here and get a job. And it lasted way longer than anyone expected it to. GameStop is still, in spite of itself, still around. But as they are circling the drain and have been for a long time, they're taking cost cutting measures. And of course this shitty company that's always been shitty had to do it in the most kind of petty and needlessly cruel way where it's just like, okay, no warning, middle of making the next issue, let's just pull everyone into a meeting. Let's do an AI written goodbye note that nobody on the staff signed off on. Let's nuke the website. So we've got so many years, so many, like, thankfully, well, there are elements they haven't got to yet. But all the articles and everything are gone off the Internet now. Yeah, nuke the Twitter account. Locked the fucking doors to the office. So all that game preservation and history that are there, that if anyone's ever seen videos of the Vault and things like that, it's really the most incredible collection of game history I've ever seen in my life. That is God knows, I mean, you can probably assume what GameStop is going to do with it. And. Yeah, so, I mean, look, that's the negative stuff. We've known this is going to happen for a long time, but yeah, so many just industry legends have come through there and then the staff that were still there at the end and are now looking for jobs, you know, there's. If you look at, well, shit, no, they deleted the Twitter account. Look at, look at Brian Shay's Twitter. Look at Kyle Hilliard's Twitter. Look at Alex Van Akins. You know, there are a lot of people that have posted the masthead of everyone, not just the writers and people that appeared on videos and podcasts, but also the layout people, you know, Lille and Margaret, you know, people that worked there for many, many years that are now looking for jobs. Yeah, it's. Man, I. I had a lot of thoughts this weekend. You know, I was sitting in Grub's basement and I got a text from. From someone that former editor, and. And it's like, well, shit, there it is. It happened. And yeah, yeah, I don't know what else there is to say. It was kind of that last bastion of the games media that I grew up with that made me want to go into this line of work. You know, they were the last Us magazine. They. Yeah, and you know what? I was glad that I was there during the Pivot to, you know, it was this old print media magazine that I was there when, you know, they start doing podcasts and streams and we got to do fun stuff like Replay and, you know, Hanson and Tim doing the podcast. And it's. I feel like despite being like, you know, oh, a dinosaur, some might say this old brand from 1991, they stayed around and they stayed relevant. And like we were saying with the staff, like, you know, talk about some great names that have gone on to do great things and I'm confident that the staff that were just laid off are all going to go do great things as well. So.
