Fandom Entertainment Company Drops Layoff Bomb: Gamespot, Metacritic, More Affected

Fandom has reportedly laid off several employees, affecting several game and entertainment enterprises.

Four months after purchasing the entertainment and gaming websites for around $50 million, Fandom has laid off an undefined number of workers at GameSpot, Giant Bomb, Metacritic, and TV Guide, in addition to other Fandom staff.

On Thursday, several employees of the websites affected by the layoffs tweeted on social media about the situation. However, no representatives from Fandom has not given any comment on the issue.

According to Variety, an employee affected by the cuts reports that less than 10% of the company's overall employment, which numbers fewer than 500 workers, were affected by the layoffs.

Companies Affected Under Fandom Layoffs

An alarming amount of workers from Fandom's entertainment properties, including Giant Bomb, GameSpot, and Metacritic, have reportedly been let go. These websites are primarily concerned with publishing content related to video games and TV shows.

Around 500 individuals work for the company, and the layoffs have affected 10% of its workforce across various sites. According to Kotaku, CEO Perkins Miller made this unexpected news during an all-hands meeting, which caught the staff off unprepared.

Fandom claimed that this acquisition would enable it to "super-serve" its advertising partners and support the growth of its data platform and gaming e-commerce verticals.

Based on social media posts, former employees that said they were laid off include GameSpot entertainment editor Mat Elfring; Giant Bomb video producers Jess O'Brien and Jason Oestreicher; Stuart Kimball, associate video producer at GameSpot; Mason Downey, GameSpot entertainment writer; and Justin Vachon, a graphic designer who worked on Giant Bomb, GameSpot, TV Guide, and Metacritic.

What Is Fandom Entertainment Company?

According to Bloomberg, Fandom Inc. is an entertainment company and business that provides a platform for gamers and entertainment fans to play, communicate, create, shop, and celebrate their favorite games, media, and culture.

Jimmy Wales, a co-founder of Wikipedia and businesswoman Angela Beesley established Fandom in 2004. Fandom was sold to Jon Miller's Integrated Media Co. in 2018, a venture-capital-backed organization. The firm claims that Fandom includes "every fictional universe ever created," represented by over 40 million content pages on 250,000 wikis.

Recently, TechCrunch reported that Entertainment platform Fandom announced its acquisition of seven entertainment and gaming brands, including online publications Comic Vine, Cord Cutters News, GameFAQs, GameSpot, Giant Bomb, Metacritic, and TV Guide.

Giant Bomb and GameSpot, which were once owned by Viacom CBS, were both sold to Red Ventures in 2020, who later resold them to Fandom in October, along with Metacritic, TV Guide, and other websites.

Additionally, the original plan was to have control of these digital assets, which would enable Fandom to reach 350 million monthly users, ranking it as the 14th ad-supported website in the United States. The company's progress toward achieving its objective of becoming the top fan platform worldwide is being maintained by the increase in monthly users.