1Up.com Fallout: Kennedy Speaks Out
- Scribbled on January 7th, 2009 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Industry News
Sam Kennedy, the lone surviving editor of the recent firings at 1UP.com has posted his reaction at NeoGAF.
Well, this is a pretty f***ing big deal, I just lost almost half my staff, and God knows what sort of hate is flying around right now. There’s no way to rationalize this for most people, and I don’t want to sugar-coat anything. My blog (for anyone that actually read all of it) was sincere — this is a great thing for 1UP. Lord knows we need some better infrastructure and backing. As for many of the podcasts and other shows that we worked so hard on — and the people that produced them — obviously, not so much. And I’m not saying that’s OK, and I’m not saying you should even be remotely fine with that — it kills me (and, to be perfectly honest, even the UGO people), that not everything could be preserved. And I’m not here to defend this. It freaking sucks. But from my vantage point, UGO did what they could to, what I consider, “save” 1UP. Obviously, all of us would have wanted to see things go differently — most of all me, considering I just lost many of my closest friends as co-workers and employees today.
He adds:
Right now I’m just concerned about my friends. I just came back from a night of drinks at our regular spot, where lots of the games industry showed up to show their support for the guys. Honestly, it was so great to see everyone come out for the team. While a part of me is certainly happy about what UGO/Hearst has just done for 1UP — because, like I said, it could have been a lot worse — today was the worst day of my life.
It seems that 1Up.com would have been dead without UGO buying it, but the mass firings still seem excessive.
January 7th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
[...] (nee Computer Gaming World), has reacted to remaining 1Up.com editor Sam Kennedy’s blog about the recent UGO acquisition of 1Up.com and the subsequent layoffs. Green states that Kennedy was forced to “put on a [...]