No less than someplace between 20-30 employees members have been laid off at G4TV right now, in keeping with three sources conversant in the enterprise. The online game speak present community from the 2000s was resurrected final fall on streaming platforms like Twitch in addition to cable TV, however now faces main upheaval lower than a 12 months later. “I really can’t think about the corporate persevering with to supply our slate of content material with out the individuals we misplaced right now,” mentioned one worker.
The timing and severity of the cuts took employees abruptly, with expertise displaying up on set right now able to movie solely to have programming cancelled as HR reps met individually with staff. Whereas it’s not clear what the extent of the layoffs might be, one supply mentioned these affected have been instructed they’d obtain anyplace between 16 weeks and 6 months of severance primarily based on their tenure with Comcast, G4’s guardian firm.
Three sources inform Kotaku that G4’s funds have been in unhealthy form for a while, and managers have been tasked with on the lookout for price financial savings wherever doable. Issues apparently got here to a head throughout an all-hands assembly a few months in the past when then-G4 president Russell Arons mentioned the troubles the enterprise was dealing with and proposed unrealistic income targets for the 12 months forward. Employees felt blindsided, one supply mentioned, because of an absence of clear targets for measuring success in opposition to as much as that time.
Arons left shortly after and was changed by Comcast Spectator CEO Joe Marsh who sources say was solely excited about discovering methods to slash the price range. The suddenness and severity of right now’s layoffs have been sudden, nevertheless, and name into query what the way forward for the brand new G4 might be. The community only in the near past introduced a slate of latest content material, together with a satirical Xplay present known as God of Work, a play on Sony’s hit God of Warfare sequence.
Initially launched in 2002 by Comcast, G4 was the one outlet for gaming information, evaluations, and discussions on TV on the time. Its fundamental exhibits have been Xplay, hosted by Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb, and Assault of the Present!, hosted by Olivia Munn and Kevin Pereira. These exhibits have been finally cancelled in 2012, and the community closed down just a few years later as gaming video content material migrated on-line.
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The community then relaunched in November 2021 with a mixture of outdated and new expertise, in addition to plans to stream every day content material on Twitch and different platforms along with being hosted on cable. Along with Sessler and Pereira returning, new hosts included professional wrestler Austin “Xavier Woods” Watson, Indiana “Froskurinn” Black, Jirard “The Completionist” Khaliland, Fiona Nova, and plenty of others.
The relaunch was reportedly the mind baby of Tucker Roberts, the son of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. Tucker led the cable and web firm’s transfer into esports and is at the moment the president of the aggressive Overwatch workforce, Philadelphia Fusion. Based on one supply, nevertheless, Tucker stepped away from G4 operations again in March.
Replace: 9/14/22 6:05 p.m. ET: Added extra details about how employees discovered about cuts.
