Because one very rarely just "pulls the plug" when it comes to the internet and corporate bureaucracy.
The hardworking tech folks at Defy who just built the latest redesign for the website were just as shocked to hear about defys decision to end GT, as they had spent 6 months getting everything in working order. It's definitely a bummer for them to hear about GTs closure.
The end of gametrailers was never just the website, by firing all the editorial staff there was nothing left to the site after the previous round of layoffs.
Plus Defy probably payed for the domain for the next year, so even if it's stagnant they can just wait until then if they want.
There's also a distinct chance of the forums of gametrailers staying alive past the life of the original website assuming there isn't an effort to fold the GT forums into the escapist.
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Honestly I can't help but wonder if somewhere there's someone who downloaded every trailer piece of media they could during the GT and viacom builds of the site who hasn't yet been informed of the dire need for their catalog...
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You're preaching to the choir on this one. I stayed with the site through thick and thin, through every redesign and storm, and I kept my ear to ground as best I could.
If we wanna talk about more disastrous and foolish viacom edicts, I think one of the other most destructive ones was what I like to call "the flux mandate" where just like the video player, viacom wanted to unify every website they had under one software and user interface platform. (Social project flux)
On paper it's not a terrible idea. And in it's earliest iterations it was kind of novel, as it was basically a viacom backed Facebook alternative for use on all their sites. One login granted access to every major viacom site (except Nickelodeon and Southpark studios).
On mtv.com people were using the social networking and they even had a user experience similar to like 2009 Facebook.
Of course viacom likes to trip over it's feet and not support anything in tandem and as time went one they forced the implementation of flux on multiple sites.
The colbert report had a cool colbert nation forum. Discontinued after the flux integration since you basically need to custom build a vb board to interact with flux. TV land had a small community of (presumably senior citizens) who love their old shows and betty white - eradicated not long after they tried to start fresh with flux.
The fine tech folks at GT, like Jim Beardman (Chodefloater) and Kelly (Keldohead), Alex Norris, et al managed to save GT from the same grisly fate by working with flux and making a new board that worked with it back in 2012. But that redesign alone brought a lot of unhappiness, and while it kept the site going, a wide swath of previous generations of users stayed away.
Development on the Facebook like features of flux was very quickly dropped as it's clear they were directed to exclusively focus on getting every site under the same technology platform with a similar UI and UX for logging in without any thought to actually retaining a community.
Eventually many of the sites that first adopted flux had had their communities so decimated that they basically killed that aspect of their sites and just moved to Facebook and Twitter.
Social Project Flux has also met a fairly sad end as going to their website pulls a lot of 404s when you try any of their links, and they removed their support and suggestions email from the flux based moderator panel.
Viacom's inept, uneven, shortsighted, under invested and horribly managed technology divisions have undoubtedly also seen some pretty bad days and layoffs, and I pity them too, for the plague wrought upon all those other sites was done with the best of intentions only for them to be yanked and dragged away from what should've been their priorities in favor of whatever wretched corporate synergy some suit in Viacom demanded of them
