Several amazing game industry writers and editors are now without a job.


Gaming news site Polygon was just sold off to one of the so-called cesspools of the Internet, Valnet. Before the sale was even announced, now former Editor-in-Chief at Polygon, Chris Plante, made the announcement of the layoffs on his personal social media.

Valnet is one of those companies that pulls in bits of information and materials from a large pool of sources. Often the sites owned by Valnet are labeled as "clickbait" and "content mills" as they use AI tools to pump out content and to allegedly game search engine results.

Besides today's acquisition of Polygon, Valnet owns gaming focused sites such as:

• GameRant
• TheGamer
• OpenCritic
• DualShockers
• Fextralife

Valnet also owns:

• ScreenRant
• How-To Geek
• MovieWeb
• Collider
• CBR
• XDA Developers
• MakeUseOf

If you have visited many of these sites recently, you probably have a pretty good idea at the direction that Polygon will soon go.

Polygon co-founder and former EIC Chris Plante dropped news of the layoffs through Bluesky earlier today.

The sale was announced via a press release, but did not mention any layoffs.

Several other now former Polygon employees took to their own socials to announce that they were laid off. They include writer Michael McWhertor, former senior reporter Nicole Carpenter, Petrana Radulovic, Ana Diaz, and Pete Volk. Matthew Reynolds, Polygon's former deputy editor, says that he's also stepping away from Polygon following today's news.

I wish nothing but the best for all of the employees that were let go. The Polygon we knew is now no more and moving forward it will be nothing but a shell of its former self.