Polygon sold to Valnet and suffers mass layoffs

Polygon was one of the original worst journo sites that set the trend for the clickbait identity politics focus for the rest of them.

Rest in piss, hope the whole thing gets shut down next.
 
Remember when MS gave them well over 6 figures to help with a "documentary" production cost about Polygon and why Polygon exists when they were first launching the site?

Good times.
 
Honestly Polygon was never good, but it had become utterly pathetic in its last year or two. So little game coverage, mostly movies/TV, and what game stuff they had was casual F2P trash. "Culture" "writers" like Ana Diaz churning out just utter trash "content".
 
Draugoth said:
Looks up Polygon journalists on X/Bluesky
They have pronouns on their Bios
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Gis'a/Job

DeepEnigma said:
Funny what happens when certain money recently dries up.
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But those Taliban won't get their condoms now either?

3j16sek.gif


:messenger_crying:
 
Pejo said:
Polygon was one of the original worst journo sites that set the trend for the clickbait identity politics focus for the rest of them.

Rest in piss, hope the whole thing gets shut down next.
Click to expand...
I also remember it being the OG of the whole "mature wholesome pseudo-intellectual" shtick.
 
MayauMiao said:
Alyssa has moral standards?

Its like listening to this guy explaining business ethics

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Things that always bugged me about that movie (because it was obviously a very serious film) is that this guy who has manipulated his way into acquiring this massive company through conniving and dception, falls over at the final hurdle because he can't make up some bullshit about business ethics. What a chump.
 
So, I had to look up Valnet... and they are a media investment company from Quebec Canada...

aBzWC6y.png



I guess their goal here is to just buy out Polygon, 'lay off' the entire staff, and just replace them with AI bots? I never used Polygon for anything. I can't remember the last time I ever visited the site. I suppose the owners just had to cut and run at this point.

Gaming media has been on the verge of seppuku for the last decade. Especially the western based videogame outlets. Given the death of E3 and most big game studios doing their own PR through 'directs'.
 
MrCunningham said:
Valnet is probably not going to close down Polygon, I'm sure they bought the website for a reason... it seems like they just laid off the old staff, and will have them replaced?
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Judging from the other sites that Valnet seems to own (Collider, Screen Rant, Game Rant, etc.) they will probably replace the laid off staff with AI and farm SEO engagements like the other sites
 
Unknown Soldier said:
Judging from the other sites that Valnet seems to own (Collider, Screen Rant, Game Rant, etc.) they will probably replace the laid off staff with AI and farm SEO engagements like the other sites
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If they go the AI route to churn out content, it would be hilarious if the content is much better and the views go up.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
Judging from the other sites that Valnet seems to own (Collider, Screen Rant, Game Rant, etc.) they will probably replace the laid off staff with AI and farm SEO engagements like the other sites
Click to expand...

Based Valnet for the zombification of the internet. I guess they don't make profit by hiring staff directly. Does this mean that they will farm out the Polygon Game Award panel to India? Or will it all just be based on search engine optimization?

And to add one more thing:

Polygon? No... more like... Polygoodbye.
 
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I'm not all that shocked, you can't expect high profit from low quality.

If you go down to your local nutter house and hire the first five blobs with human features and personality hair you couldn't have expected quality journalism
 
Draugoth said:
Alyssa Mercante is melting down over this


Kr3vWli.png
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Honestly, it's the 'I'm in the middle of moving' part that I find funniest about this. It speaks to the slacktivism. She's fired up, but also… too busy to send a few text messages apparently. So she's not actually going to do anything.
 
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I'm happy this happened and I'm not sad people lost their jobs.

I understand how much it sucks from a humane point of view, but from a capitalistic perspective this is fantastic. Gaming journalism, at least the way it is today, needs to die and the fact it's happening says the system is simply working.

People don't want it, it needs to fail. The real question is how in hell so many gaming websites that aren't really about games have survived this long, but also how the fuck the entire hobby, popular mostly among men who just want to play games (as many others, TTRPG, Comics etc), has become another outlet for activists.

Let's all rejoice: It's dying in front of our eyes.

Also feel free to recommend any nonpolitical gaming website worth reading. Not anti-woke shit, a website that is unashamedly just about games and doesn't need to preface every sentence with a lecture about the oppressed.
 
Harlock said:
Bluesky is a symphony of lament right now. Beautiful.
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What's funny is maybe if they hadn't isolated themselves from other opinions and viewpoints on Bluehair they could have seen this coming

But they're going to double and triple down and the world will continue to not care about it or even celebrate their plight
 
rhiBfTP.gif


I do have to wonder though: why is anybody buying these useless outfits? What money-making potential is left in any of them?
 
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Ein Bear said:
Honestly, it's the 'I'm in the middle of moving' part that I find funniest about this. It speaks to the slacktivism. She's fired up, but also… too busy to send a few text messages apparently. So she's not actually going to do anything.
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I can "make a Discord" on my phone and then post an invite to some people in like 10 minutes. And most of those 10 minutes are just thinking about who I want to invite. So even if she's "busy" "moving", she could do this while taking a shit or so.

This is just empty posturing on Twitter to collect some internet points, like all Twitters do.
 
hemo memo said:
So only IGN and Gamespot will remeain in the end.
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Time for Neogaf to step up, for all the shit talk and banter between members the flip side is some write absolutely insanely excellent reviews of titles just because they actually love video games.

Throw a normal front page up with nice formatting for the reviews, reward some free gold and you're driving members and advertising with some of the best information in gaming the works already being provided….
 
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