I remember the first time I heard about the return of G4, and that was when the controversial member Indiana “Froskurinn” Black had an interesting outburst at one of their segments about how women were treated on the show and in the gaming industry, mostly referring to herself and the abuse she was receiving online. It was handled unwell in my opinion and garnered a lot of negative responses despite Indiana “Froskurinn” Black’s reasonable outcry. The next time I heard anything notable about G4 was the fact that they are shutting down.

G4, for those who may not have been aware of them, is an American pay television and digital network owned by Comcast Spectacor that primarily focused on video games. Their return was unexpected, yet was met with relatively good excitement. However, that excitement was short-lived as views started plummeting, and with Indiana “Froskurinn” Black ranting about sexism, basically attacking her potential viewing, it had all the making of a sinking ship. After that, things just didn’t look well for G4 and views continued to decline.

Now let me make this clear, calling out sexism is not what caused the show to crumble. Fighting for equality and respectable treatment among genders is always a good thing. However, I believe it played a part in souring the good faith in the company. There was a time and a place for everything, and she, along with the company chose a poor time.

That and the fact that the gaming space is mostly dominated by individuality, rather than a corporation makes everything that G4 could have done come off soulless and at times cringy. People like the personality of a creator, a creator that’s oftentimes not constrained by his/her contract. As this space is highly fast-changing, with a new trend showing up left and right, adapting to that kind of environment is key to survival, and with the company managing many influencers at once, changing fast to adapt is virtually impossible. This is what I believe led to the downfall of G4 for the second time. People hate when anything feels corporate. It is what it is and it’s a great lesson to be learned.

Honestly, the short answer to it all is with no views coming to the channel, means no money, which means no show! The overhead just wasn’t there and so they pulled to plug. What’s sad about all of this is that so many people have just lost their job unexpectedly which is never a good thing.