Giant Bomb team returning to CBS Interactive after site purchase

CBS Interactive has acquired Giant Bomb, the video game site started three years after its founders left (or were fired from) the media company's subsidiary GameSpot over controversial circumstances. It's a bit of a homecoming for Giant Bomb's founders. The site was co-founded in 2008 by GameSpot's former associate editor Ryan Davis and former editorial director Jeff Gerstmann. The latter worked at the site for more than a decade but was fired over his critical review for Kane & Lynch: Dead Men -- its publisher Eidos Interactive was buying ad space on GameSpot at the time. Gerstmann and Davis set up Giant Bomb with online media company Whiskey Media soon afterward as a video-focused site competing against GameSpot, and welcomed other editors who ended up leaving GameSpot. Whiskey Media owner Shelby Bonnie, however, recently sold the firm's various online properties (e.g. Screened, Anime Vice) to production company BermanBraun and CBS Interactive, according to a report from All Things Digital. Gerstmann assures Giant Bomb fans that while he and his crew are returning to CBS Interactive, the site will retain creative control, and will "not answer to anyone regarding scores or content." "I wouldn't work like that," he adds. "Part of us going back there is very much like we are going to be in charge of Giant Bomb." None of the parties involved have yet to disclose financial terms for the deal, but the Giant Bomb team says it will have more resources to deliver the kind of content its viewers want. Giant Bomb's senior east coast editor Alex Navarro, also a GameSpot veteran, comments, "It's worth mentioning that the regime at CBS is very different than when we all left. It's not like we're going back to an abusive lover." "It's more like we're going back to the bar where we met the abusive lover, but there are brand new, kind people we're sleeping with now," says Navarro.