Video Game Website Polygon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Mass Layoffs

An anonymous reader shares a report: The video game website Polygon has been sold to click-farm powerhouse Valnet and much of its masthead has been laid off, Kotaku has learned. The sale was subsequently announced in a press release. Multiple staff members have posted online about losing their jobs or about colleagues now being out of work.

Good riddance

[nyet]

They stopped being a video game website years ago.

They have been posting almost exclusively "OMG POLYGON IS WOKE" bait for quite some time.

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[nyet]

BTW kotaku isn't any better lol

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[matthewcharles2006]

This is a pretty crappy attitude, celebrating people losing their jobs because you dont like their opinions on games. As a site they've always been pretty left-leaning and never pretended otherwise, and they published no more bait than literally any other website these days. They also had by far the best mainstream tabletop rpg coverage bringing attention to indie games of all kinds.

Unsurprising

[alvinrod]

I have probably read something they published in the last decade, but I just looked at their website and one of the top articles had a title ending in the cliched "and that's a good thing" that reeks of the kind of midwit tripe an LLM could spit out without anyone being able to tell. Do real human beings read this at all and have game publishers realized that it's not worth buying coverage or review scores on these sites and keeping them financially afloat.

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[Rinnon]

Somehow a bunch of social activists invaded the videogame scene, annihilated it like the HIV virus and here we are.

Is that how it seems to you? Because how it seems to me is that all of a sudden a (very) vocal subsection of the gaming community couldn't stop themselves from complaining every time the topic comes up about how everybody and their grandma was "woke", and that the entire gaming industry was in total collapse as a result, despite any evidence to the contrary. I must say, I found/find that far more irritating than any actual social issues I've come across in any game I play. Kinda makes me think all these co

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[Rinnon]

Counterpoint, Anonymous Coward, can you read? I didn't say what you're describing isn't there; I said people complaining about it was more irritating than anything I actually come across. You may have also confused my sentence in which I said "[..] the entire gaming industry was in total collapse [...]" for having just been talking about game journalism. If you thought I was suggesting that Polygon's fall was not a result of their choice of content *shrug* I'm not. I wouldn't know why they failed, and I don

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[rsmith-mac]

Polygon had seen better days, that's for sure. But in their early days the site was very, very good.

More than anything else, I feel like the site lost its focus somewhere in the last half-decade. The original focus of the site is all in the name: polygons - as in video games. But Vox slowly morphed it into a general pop culture website. These days it's a mix of video games, movies, TV shows, board games, books, etc.

Those are all fine things in and of themselves. But at best they dilute the brand. And at wor

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[thegarbz]

Do real human beings read this at all

I don't know. I haven't seen an article with the title "I read this, and you should too." Ok jokes aside I'm SOOO FUCKING TIRED of rubbish tripe headlines that are not only cliché, but in some cases aggressively outright telling you what to do.

By the way that article headline was "an that's a great thing". Not even good. GREAT! But in Polygon's defence, that seems to be the only shitty headline. The rest of them are far more ... normal.

pot meet kettle.

[Anonymous Coward]

..sold to click-farm powerhouse..

audacious coming from Kotaku...

Who will now call out the fascist subtext of manga

[gacattac]

https://www.polygon.com/2019/6... [polygon.com]

"The fascist subtext of Attack on Titan can’t go overlooked"

"The modern manga and anime industries would not exist without Attack on Titan."

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[smooth wombat]

Couldn't get past the first episode of AoT. Seemed just plain stupid and full of holes as well as standard cliches.

If they think manga wouldn't exist without AoT, that tells you all you need to know.

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[Hodr]

Everyone knows modern manga and anime industries owe their existence to Tenisu no ôjisama (The Prince of Tennis).

Same firm as TheGamer

[reckoner64]

FWIW, they are being sold to the same firm that owns TheGamer, Collider and ScreenRant. If you guys thought they where bad now. Just wait for a few months until Joystiq starts publishing hundreds of AI generated sensationalism.

Direct content sponsorship

[TwistedGreen]

Oh no, what will we do without our thinly veiled ads?

At least Valnet will be able to milk its dead husk of any remaining value.

Fully Ramblomatic or Nothing

[skinlayers]

Yahtzee Crosshaw is the only game reviewer whose opinion I give two shits about, these days.
Polygon has been hot garbage for a hot minute. I've avoided clicking links to their obnoxious articles for years.
Good riddance, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!

Polygon was a video game website?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's news to me. I thought they were a club of dimwits whose primary purpose was to tell others that all gamers are racists, misogynists, and ista-phobe-ists for not liking the oily crap pooped out by some studio that has ben infested with idiot-activists.