Polygon's sudden sale is another blow to the future of games journalism

We all have our morning rituals.

Mine often involves waking up, taking a look at my phone and scanning the news.

There’s only a few sites that I can be bothered to visit while my eyes adjust to the light.

They are mostly Australian news websites, but one overseas site makes the cut. It’s not The New York Times, or Wall Street Journal. It’s Polygon.

For the past decade, the site has been a staple in my gaming media diet, largely because of its diverse coverage and respect for its subject matter. I don’t always agree with its stories or reviews, but I have immense respect for the way in which the site conducts itself, and has elevated the overall discussion on gaming.

Savvy editorship and writing means I’m generally always surprised when I read Polygon, with crafty angles and writing on even the most general of video game news, such as console launches. Judging by traffic, others generally agree. It ranks as one of the top gamings news sites globally, behind other major players such as IGN and Gamespot.

Imagine my shock to read, not on Polygon, but on its sister site The Verge, that a publication that had become my gaming news equivalent of a morning coffee has suddenly — and without warning or rumour — been sold.

Despite being leagues apart in terms of coverage and intent, Polygon will now operate inside the same media stable as GameRant, under the purview of Valnet. In addition, a swathe of the team has been let go. The site’s main editor-in-chief Chris Plante is out of the company.

This, sadly, isn’t exactly new in the media landscape. But there are few breadcrumbs from what we know about the deal that point to the broader challenges faced right now by gaming media.

The deal

It may have been a decade ago, but I’ve worked in a newsroom that’s been under the hammer. There’s some interesting contrasts between the two deals.

I first heard about News Corp’s acquisition of Business Spectator on ABC’s Radio National on the train into work. While I knew the owners of the business were looking for an exit, I never expected for it to break via other media before I even knew about it, working for the company and all.

The deal, however, was interesting. The three main journalists of the business, who set up the newsroom, had to serve varying tenures at News Corp as part of the deal. This was to ensure a smooth transition, and to also get maximum value out of the asset. To that end, there were also no editorial cuts.

While there’s a lot to say about the ethics and business values of News Corp, one thing it understands as a business is that a newsroom is the product of its team. A new brand is only worth as much as the talent supporting it. And even marquee writers, such as the founding team of Business Spectator, need the support of sub-editors, and other journalists to round out their coverage and grow their product.

This brings us to the Polygon deal. Not only was it sudden — one staffer was on vacation when they found out — but it also led to an immediate round of layoffs. Polygon has been purchased as a brand, possibly as a platform too. Less value has been seemingly placed on its editorial team.

Undermined by AI

Even half way around the world, I know that Vox Media has been broadly seen as a great place to work by its writers. The extended tenure of many of them speaks volumes to this, some Polygon writers stayed at the site for over a decade of their career.

This, itself, makes this sudden deal all the more shocking. And is a broader warning for the games media industry.

While information is scarce, and will likely continue to be, one assumption is that this is a preemptive strike from Vox on what may be a race to the bottom in gaming journalism. Just last week, The Game Business noted a steep decline in the number of articles published by the gaming press in Q1 of 2025.

The commentary on the show went on to discuss how AI was undermining traffic for video game guides, which in recent years has become a primary driver of traffic. This makes sense. While you may read a news article once, maybe twice, guides are evergreen content that will continually generate traffic over time. Polygon was one of many sites that had gone all-in on this approach, producing guide content for most major games, and receiving advanced copies from publishers in order to do so in a timely manner.

No click-through needed. And the Youtube guide is ranked over any written guides.

Google’s Gemini AI has now been scraping these guides and providing its own summary that eliminates the need for a clickthrough. Handy for the end-user, harmful for the creators of this content.

While guides are the most obvious example, this extends to other articles too. Reviews, news, analysis, the bread and butter of gaming journalism are being curated by the end user, with little incentives for the creator of the content. If this is where we’re heading, it’s worrying to think where we may be in 12 months’ time.

This, combined with an enduringly weak advertising market, ongoing volatility in the US and the potential for a recession speaks to a very troubling time ahead for games journalism, as the vast majority of it is US-based.

The future?

Historically, the gaming media has actually been a precursor to broader media trends. It was one of the first rounds to invest heavily in both the internet as a distribution platform, and then to adopt multi-media reporting as capabilities for this came online.

One area, however, that it has been slow to adopt is subscriptions. Gaming journalism, by and large, has aggressively remained free to consume due to the large volume of traffic it generates on the web.

Will this need to change? Perhaps. In this sense, the work that Game File and Aftermath are doing in pushing games reporting as a subscription-worthy form of media is commendable. (Both are well worth subscribing to and paying for.)

Then, there’s Substack, and other creator-led platforms. While they are a bright spot in what is a very grim period for the media, there are questions about the limits of their coverage. Will a Substack writer take on the liability and ethical considerations involved in reporting something like sexual abuse cases at major gaming studios? That’s just one example, but the past 10 years has been littered with instances where the PR might of the gaming industry has rammed up against games journalism. Even on my platform, I’m fully aware of my limitations.

For now, there’s dozens of very talented writers now looking for work. And those elsewhere, working in games journalism, possibly feel like their jenga tower of a career just got that little bit more unstable.

For now, I’ll continue to keep Polygon in my morning ritual, and see how Valnet treats its purchase. I’ll be doing so in solidarity for those who are left. It’s one thing to be laid off, it’s another to feel the pressure and mixed emotions of being one of the survivors.

What do you think about the sale of Polygon and its broader implications for games media? And journalism in general? Let me know here.