Crispy Gamer lays off editorial staff

The entire editorial staff of fledgling video games website Crispy Gamer have been laid off, it has been confirmed.

Furthermore, the news was followed by the immediate departure of CEO Chris Heldman, whom Joystiq reports walked away from the company in protest at the redundancies.

The collapse comes just a month after Crispy Gamer swooped to acquire stat-driven community site GamerDNA.

The site’s staff included Elise Vogel, Kyle Orland, Scott Jones, John Teti, Evan Narcisse, James Fudge and Ryan Kuo.

Co-founder John Keefer, who previously departed the company to head over to GamePolitics, told Joystiq: It’s hard to see a dream die, especially one you put your heart and soul into.

The site was created for the readers and to give them an alternative voice, to dig deeper than many of the sites out there and to make readers think about what they play and why they play. Personally, I had a lot of fun in the process. Thanks to all the people that read the site and became part of the growing community.”

Crispy Gamer launched in late 2008 and later caused alarm when it revealed that it had raised over $8m from venture capitalists.