The brand new giantbomb.com is right around the corner and here’s everything you need to know about its launch, some important information, and a little bit of expectation-setting as well.
We’re still on track to flip the switch on the new site Saturday, December 6, 2025. Doing so will require that we freeze the legacy site for the entire week leading up to that date, Monday December 1 through Friday December 5.
So what does that mean? It means we’ll need to temporarily shut off any and all user editing so that we can take a “snapshot” of that data and transfer it to the new site. We’ll still be producing content that week.
This is also the absolute very last chance you’ll have to opt in to the site terms, something that is necessary to ensure the ability to manage your user account on the new site. If you don’t opt in, the data won’t go away, you’ll just lose the ability to manage it.
(Feeling paranoid? Click here https://www.giantbomb.com/account/tos-confirmation/ and if you're navigated to the homepage, you are coming with us to the new site.)
Now let’s talk a little bit about expectation-setting for the new site. It may be a little bumpy out of the gate. This project has been a colossal undertaking, and while we’re very happy with how things have gone up til now, we just want to prepare everyone for some potential wonkiness here and there.
Here’s what will be ready at launch:
- Videos and custom video player, including “watch later” playlists
- Podcasts and audio player, plus “listen later” playlists
- Live stream and chat
- Full back catalog of videos, podcasts, and shows
- Premium RSS Feeds
- Improved stream calendar
- Improved premium sub management
- User Articles (Previously Blogs)
- User Reviews (View-only to start)
- User Lists (View-only to start)
- New The Bomb 12 features
What won’t be ready
- User Review editing/creation
- User List editing/creation
- Forum email notifications (and all notifications from the site in general)
- Downloading Video / Audio directly from the site (this will be coming to premium members soon)
Limited functionality
- The Wiki
- Many pages will be viewable, but editing and creation will take some time as the community works together on these features.
- All of the data will be there
- Improved functionality and features to gradually improve in the coming months
- The wiki is a community effort and we need your programming help - head to https://bombcast.com/wiki for more information on how to contribute.
What is newly gated?
- User Review and Article creation - all legacy content will be available and viewable, but creating new ones will be Premium features.
- This helps us reduce surface area of liability for running a site with user generated content (just trust us on this one)
- To be clear: All old/legacy content will transfer to the new site, but only creating NEW content will be gated
- Downloading Video/Audio directly from the site
Ads
Non-premium members have always been served ads on giantbomb.com and we’re going to need to continue doing this to serve as a mechanism for support. We’ve reworked how ads display on the new site and we think it presents in a much better way. We also wanted to be able to offer certain kinds of bespoke ad insertion for our partners who want that kind of integration, so we’ve been very considerate how that could potentially impact the site-viewing experience. The beauty of this though is that we decide who we want to work with, and you’ll never see takeover campaigns that we didn’t first sign off on. Separately, keep in mind that Google AdSense is a dynamic ad network, so we don’t control what shows up in those modules– your browsing history does.
More to come soon. Thanks!
