Polygon has been sold to Valnet

The state of gaming journalism is in a dismal state at the moment, and there's been a lot of chatter about the state of the industry amongst the ranks of current and former journalists working in this space. Another shoe just dropped today (via Kotaku): Vox Media has sold its gaming and entertainment site, Polygon, to Valnet, owner of such sites as Screen Rant, Collider, CBR, Game Rant, and a whole bunch of others.

This is a distressing development, one that hits home for me: I worked for Vox Media's tech site The Verge, under Polygon co-founder Chris Plante, and knew and worked closely with a number of the writers who were currently at the site, and who have been laid off. When I left The Verge, Plante and the editors who worked there threw me a lifeline by letting me contribute to the site, where I wrote a number of pieces that I'm really proud of, like Disney's refusal to pay some of its tie-in writers, how cosplayer culture helped inspire The Mandalorian, how the war on terror crept into the look and feel of Halo, interviews with folks like Timothy Zahn and Mike Mignola, and nerdy explainers about everything from Larry Niven's Ringworld to Isaac Asimov's Foundation to clone troopers.

I'm angry and sad about this. The gaming industry is massive, but outlets are increasingly ignoring or cutting down on covering it. The Washington Post closed down its gaming vertical Launcher in 2023, Vice Media shut down Waypoint the same year, and GameStop shuttered Game Informer in 2024. There have been some bright points: Game Informer was recently brought back from the dead, Walmart recently launched Restart, and former Kotaku staffers (that site itself going through a ton of cuts) launched an excellent site, Aftermath.

Polygon was a site that I'd never imagine getting cut from Vox's lineup, and what really gets me here is that Vox sold off the site – one with a really strong masthead with committed and curious writers – to Valnet, whose portfolio is made up of sites that churn out an endless stream of click-bait garbage. The site was recently the subject of an investigation by TheWrap, which reported on the working conditions and pay:

When Valnet takes over a fan site, the playbook is well established: employees are replaced by contractors, compensation plummets and writers who complain land on a blacklist that blocks them from working for Valnet sites altogether.

Given that a ton of writers that I respect were just laid off, I have to imagine that that's what's going to happen with Polygon now is that its interesting, well-researched (and infused with a good sense of journalistic ethics) explainers, reviews, and commentaries will be replaced with more SEO clickbait. It's a damn shame, because it means a lot of talented writers are now out of work and a site that did a lot of good coverage probably won't be any longer.