G4 Faces Layoffs | 5 Minute Gaming News

Today in the news!
- Embracer Group is Taking a Stand Against Crunch
- G4 TV Faces Layoffs
- Sony welcomes UK watchdog’s decision to further probe Xbox’s Activision deal

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[xavier]

Embracer Group is not a publisher, it's a holdings company.

[micheljavert]

Remember how G4 first came along after it swallowed a larger, better cable channel (TechTV), then proceeded to run the operation straight into the ground? Eventually turning a channel dedicated to tech news, how-to's (hands up if you remember Leo Laporte), and gaming into endless reruns of Ninja Warrior. That network has always been the definition of "vague ideas." I'm as unsurprised that it's flailing/failing (again) as I was surprised that it was resurrected. I wonder if they let (The) Sess go again? That'd be the second time G4 left him high and dry...; don't hear that too often.

[Uldihaa]

Crunch is and will always be a failure of management to properly prepare and execute. And a big part of that is a combination of inadequately trained management and the fact that they are usually trying to push into new processes.

[AngelavengerL]

Yeah crunch culture really is awful. I remember my mom who was a games artist at Accolade being made to stay over the weekends and living off complimentary soda and popcorn. Everyone had bags under their eyes. Just a bunch of zombies rushing to meet that deadline.

[nishiana]

My heart goes out to those who got laid off. I recently found myself in the same position despite my hard work. I hope they find work fast and have enough saved up to support them through this tough time.

[Ekinoxe]

I feel like the problem with the rebooted G4 is that they didn't know their demographic. The people who watched G4 on TV when the channel was at its peak in the mid to late 2000s are all mostly over 30 now. A lot of them don't care about twitch streamers who are half their age and the twitch crowd doesn't care about TV hosts old enough to be their parents. The zoomers already had their G4 in the form of twitch/tiktok/youtube etc. and the boomers just wanted their old shows back. They tried to please both crowds and that's just not possible.

[morthasa]

Crunch (or any kind of awful experience) only feels like a "rite of passage" when it's way behind you and you are in the position of inflicting it onto others.
It's the same philosophy of "I paid MY horribly over-inflated student loans, so everyone else should not get help"

[kurobara]

The thing about crunch is that it made way more sense when you were dealing with small teams surviving game by game and games were developed in less then a year. When you would have people crunching towards the last bit of a project it wasnt necessarily the best thing but it was a small group of people coming together to push through.

But having people crunch for more than 6 weeks at a time is a case of diminishing returns and likely massively slows down game development in the long run. From a pure business sense i dont think crunch makes sense and then you consider the worker treatment and then the fact that these are massive companies making huge profits its ridiculous.

[lizzieb]

Like Jesse, I'm not surprised at the G4 layoffs- even though I feel for those who lost their jobs. And if G4 makes it through the end of the year, I'd be very surprised.

[itsalolmor]

I love how executives will make a great speech against crunch, try hard to take loops around the issue to explain it, when you should just have larger teams and more realistic projects. Not that hard to solve, really.

[Wolfoso]

Hah! Guess the "Don't like it? don't watch it!" strategy didn't pan out. Again.

[TheDirtbaggrif]

Well I'm happy that Jirard is probably coming back to his own channel

[RyderAmber]

Honestly, I enjoyed G4TV as that was my nightly news program for pop culture and games. It was on every night and I enjoyed Attack of the Show and XPlay to learn more about games I was yet introduced. That is what I wanted when I first heard it was coming back; that and an updated special of Top 100 Video Games. I actually get more game news now from 5-minute gaming news (although I wish it was longer) and other YouTubers than G4. G4 needs better structure and routine. Bring what we like about when it was on its own tv channel and spruce it up for YouTube. I would be more than happy to make a project proposal for that.

[AbbreviatedReviews]

Sounds like G4 is going the way of G4...
Seriously though, it's disappointing to see something like this relaunch and crash so quickly. The only part of it I was interested in before and currently was Xplay, but the reviews feel inconsistent and kinda rare. At least for a company that has/had that many people. Hopefully they can find their niche and build a platform people want to come back to consistently.

[inanimatesum]

Sorry to Jirard but that whole revival smelled like a disaster waiting to happen. No one really asked for it, the newer crowd would have dragged in controversy while older fans found their own gaming niches. The sheer fact that it put certain people and opinions first above gaming and showing that it can be an inviting community destroyed it even faster. Stop trying to call out a handful of people in chat, feeding losers ammo to tear you down, and acknowledge when you messed up rather than double down and yell at your remainder audience for what other people did. No one likes that feeling at all when the Teacher stops everything to lecture the class when it was only like 5 people.

Doesn't even help that most people see that kind of high production purposely whacky live television content as outdated. Sure jokes are alright but the main core content just seems so soulless like that rather than some basic set and having a more intimate engaging discussion. Pretty much don't mimic the garbage that is modern talk shows on television.

[arayajr]

G4 having layoffs already shouldnt be shocking to anyone

[barrelroll]

I always saw crunch as a result of trying to stick to fixed release dates. If game companies would consistently give us a 2 month notice for a release when they were SURE they had it figured out and done with, instead of a 2 year notice that boxes them in, there would be no need for crunch.

[robertpayne]

Tech TV was my first introduction to video games and anime long before I had access to either in any real capacity. I was so very hopeful for g4 to be something like that for another generation, but I'm not surprised to see it fall very short.

[fizz]

It's funny whenever you hear about a small team of developers having to crunch they are usually praised for their dedication but when it happens to a large team people go on about how bad it is that they had to go through that not to say that crunch is a good thing it's just weird how the perception of it seems to have changed over the years.

[andrews]

I love to hear this from the embracer group head about crunch. I would love to see this change