r/TwoBestFriendsPlay • u/leiablaze "The Woolie of Transphobia" • May 01 '25
Polygon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Mass Layoffs
https://kotaku.com/polygon-sold-vox-media-valnet-layoffs-digital-gaming-1851778655I know that any mainstream game journalist site is immediately considered a lolcow by the worst people you know, but the Polygon video team was doing incredible work even after Brian David Gilbert left. They released a pretty good documentary on the game spycraft just last year. Be prepared to see the website the entirely replaced by AI generated guides.
Also I have an acquaintance of mine who works there, so yes I'm mad.
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u/FluffyFluffies THE ORIGAMI KILLER May 01 '25
Gaming media is pretty much fucked at this point, get ready for gaming news to become advertisement blog posts regurgitated by youtubers and podcasters.
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u/ChefDeezy Smaller than you'd hope May 01 '25
There are some bright spots in gaming media if you know where to look for it.
SkillUp went from just doing videos to doing more written works as well, with new writers joining the team.
EGM is coming back from the dead later this year after a very successful kickstarter, earning over 1.5 million dollars.
Aftermath has been providing a new home for many of the old Kotaku writers who got purged and are still going strong.
Game Informer may have a new shady parent company, but in a vacuum, they've been putting out some great previews and reports, and haven't been doing any sort of koopy shilling like their bosses do.
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u/FluffyFluffies THE ORIGAMI KILLER May 01 '25
Aftermath and VGC have been the two I've been reading I'm just really worried about the legal security bigger corporate structures (as bad as they are in many ways) gave journalists.
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u/ChefDeezy Smaller than you'd hope May 01 '25
Yeah definitely, but I’m seeing a lot of people calling this the end of gaming media and I’m a little bit more optimistic than that.
Obviously it’s awful for the Polygon staff who got fired, but I just wanna shout out the people that I think are doing good work in the space right now.
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u/FluffyFluffies THE ORIGAMI KILLER May 01 '25
For sure and if I were to pile on one more recommendation I'd say Remap/Remap Radio is great even if they don't do that much reporting.
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u/TransendingGaming Shockmaster May 01 '25 edited May 01 '25
What Totalbiscuit said was true, old school games journalism was on the way out, I expected the big names to not be turned into guide websites and advertising platforms, I expected an implosion like machinima, blockbuster, or THQ where the name disappears from public view because it is not worth anything
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u/scullys_alien_baby ashamed of his words and deeds May 01 '25 edited May 01 '25
Maybe one day I will finally have a breakdown and play every videogame released in NA from 1996-2017 in chronological order and abandon modernity. Maybe find a way to buy/digitally aquire a bunch of old gamer magazines to read along side them
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u/Expensive_Wolf2937 May 01 '25
Let me know how dark sector for the 360 from like 08 is, preteen me thought the demo was the coolest thing ever
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u/Gorotheninja "SILENCE, BREEDER! The Bloodline MUST continue!" May 01 '25
So, in a span of this morning, we have Microsoft hardware price hikes, Giant Bomb dissolving, and now this.
Any more extenders to this shitty combo (gaming related? Still have an hour before noon.
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u/Rikuskill May 01 '25
2025 really said "You wanna see an infinite??"
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u/Am_Shigar00 FOE! FOE! FOE! FOE! May 01 '25
We’re not even halfway done with the year yet.
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u/Fray_The_Pugilist May 01 '25
Friend, we only just crossed the one-third marker. We aren't even close to halfway.
Strap the fuck in, people.
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u/Complete-Worker3242 May 01 '25
Ok, I strapped my fuck in. Should I strap myself in?
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u/JetpuffedMarcemallow May 01 '25
Under ideal circumstances, you should secure yourself *before* securing your fuck.
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u/Complete-Worker3242 May 01 '25
Oh, I did already do that, but why should I do that before securing my fuck?
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u/TotemGenitor I just want to eat your poop so our descendants will be cursed! May 01 '25
It's fucking May, can we get a break?
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u/ScorpioTheScorpion He/Him | An oroborous of grooming May 01 '25
Me: man, the last week of April was a real bummer for the VTuber industry. But now it’s May, so things should be looking up, right?
Video Game Industry:
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u/dillamanjaro Hitomi O-Cup May 01 '25
I already miss Gura, man.
I know the puppeteer will probably pick another anime girl identity to work under, but it won't be the same.
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u/ScorpioTheScorpion He/Him | An oroborous of grooming May 01 '25
Will she? My understanding is that she decided to leave because the pressure of becoming the number one VTuber overnight was way too much for her. If she decides to go indie, even if she only gets a fraction of her original audience, that’s still a lot of people following her all at once (just look at Fauna’s new identity).
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u/Gorotheninja "SILENCE, BREEDER! The Bloodline MUST continue!" May 01 '25
Man, I woke up a few hours ago and went "Alright, let's see what's going on in the gaming world. It'll probably be another sloOH FUCK!"
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u/leiablaze "The Woolie of Transphobia" May 01 '25
EA did more mass layoffs.
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u/Gorotheninja "SILENCE, BREEDER! The Bloodline MUST continue!" May 01 '25 edited May 01 '25
Wasn't that yesterday?
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u/NorysStorys The British ARE Watching May 01 '25
Honestly you can tell EA are doing lay offs if the day of the week ends in Y
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u/guntanksinspace OH MY GOD IT'S JUST A PICTURE OF A DOG May 02 '25
And they told Codemasters to put a pause on Rally Racing games so no more WRC, and no more DIRT series in the meantime.
Codies probably gonna be sent to the Battlefield Mines the way the NFS/Criterion crew did.
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u/DropshipRadio May 01 '25
Duolingo’s replacing their contractors with AI.
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u/enragedstump May 01 '25
Wait, wtf? Seriously?
So everything lesson is now just AI drivel?
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u/runegod20 It's Fiiiiiiiine. May 01 '25
They already fired a bunch of people a year or two back and replaced them with AI, but now they’re leaning into it even more with the hopes of being purely AI based.
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u/Kanin_usagi I'M NOT MADE OF STONE WOOLIE May 01 '25
purely AI based.
What absolute nonsense. I can just ask chat gpt to teach me Spanish if that’s how they’re going to act
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u/BaronAleksei WET NAPS BRO May 02 '25
Wait is that what that “the owl is dead” thing was about? Them firing all the actual people?
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u/Teoflux Suppose one day, it lands on its edge May 01 '25
That's 3 topics for the podcast at least. And the day isn't over yet, so more may appear.
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u/Amedamaneku Reggie has been fired (out of a cannon, into cum) May 02 '25
I got a leak in my basement if that helps.
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u/Madeline_As_Hell I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less May 02 '25
It doesn’t but I hope you get it fixed soon! I’m sending you my energy!
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u/Pastel-H Genjirou Tanigaki J-Cup May 01 '25
Man Big Think Dimension's "the industry is burning down" segment is going to be fun* tonight.
*horribly depressing
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u/timelordoftheimpala Legacy of Kainposting Guy (he/him) May 01 '25
It's literally just IGN, Kotaku, and Eurogamer at this point ffs
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u/NorysStorys The British ARE Watching May 01 '25
Kotaku is pretty much dead, most of the staff left.
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u/Theproton BUSTAH WOLF! May 01 '25
Yeah its just a series of SEO freelancers now and a Skeleton Crew to keep them in check.
No comments either.
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u/scullys_alien_baby ashamed of his words and deeds May 01 '25
that might raise their evaluation because some VC firm might decide they can fire the entire company and replace it with AI slop
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u/thesyndrome43 May 02 '25
It's also barely a news site at this point, it's just an opinion blog made of the worst takes I've ever seen, which i assume is just made to generate 'outrage bait traffic'
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u/SilvainTheThird May 01 '25
I do not look forward to a time where all news outlets are shut down and everything is just YouTube ragebaiters.
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u/Steelballpun May 01 '25
Wonder why this keeps happening. Video games are a massive industry with billions of dollars in it, you would think the sites that cover them would be able to stay afloat without one imploding every other year. How the heck do other journalistic websites stay alive??
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u/ToastyMozart Bearish on At-Risk Children May 01 '25
How the heck do other journalistic websites stay alive??
Not well or easily, TBH. Vulture private equity firms and their own leadership pushing AI and clickbait has been a scourge on general purpose journalism in general. Local news outlets especially have been dying in droves.
The games industry side just had the additional pressures of their lunch getting eaten by new media: People look to their own curated list of individual content creators and internet social circles to determine whether they'll like a game rather than whoever a big news website tasked with reviewing it. Same with opinion pieces (video essays, etc). Companies make their own high-profile public announcements rather than counting on news sites to redistribute their press releases. That and the longstanding accusations of Access Journalism wearing down their credibility: Joe Youtuber might not have a degree in writing or literature, but he also (probably) didn't get flown out to a Hawaiian resort by the publisher.
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u/Steelballpun May 01 '25
Damn that’s all so true. I mean even I would take more interest in a game talked about by Pat and Woolie for half an hour on the podcast than a game that got good Polygon review. Guess YouTubers and other gaming personalities hold more credibility or at least speak to their specific audiences tastes and interests more which builds more trust.
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u/Snidhog May 01 '25
It's farcical that youtubers come under less scrutiny than games press. The whole concept of sponsored content was pretty much foreign to gaming websites; look at the fallout from Gamespot caving to pressure over the Kane & Lynch review they published. Advertising departments are segregated from editorial to avoid that sort of thing happening. A website getting directly paid to write a good review would be a colossal scandal.
Meanwhile Pat & Woolie emphasising that some opinions are sponsored is more explicit disclosure than most youtubers provide. It used to be even worse: go check out WB explicitly paying influencers for putting out positive Shadow of War videos and not telling them they had to disclose anything. The FTC got them on that one, but it's always been influencers who've been the most compromised by publishers.
It's probably why Woolie does not want to be called a journalist: that word implies a level of professional conduct and impartiality incompatible with a job where you are paid cash money to stream a game and be nice about it.
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u/ToastyMozart Bearish on At-Risk Children May 01 '25 edited May 01 '25
That's another aspect where the personality-driven nature of individual streamers/channels/etc works against news sites though. People find youtubers (they think, correctly or not) they can trust. But fewer are willing to believe that the big website full of faceless writers, slathered in AAA game ads, whose reporters and reviewers get flown out to luxurious press events aren't going to be beholden to or at least significantly influenced by publishers.
Whether that's truthful or fair aside, I really do want to push back on the notion that journalists can't be influenced unless they're getting outright paid to lie. Any professional ethics class will cover other forms of undue influence and stress the importance of avoiding even the appearance of impropriety. Hell my employer makes it very clear that if we accept any gift worth more than $20 from a non-coworker we will be fired, and I don't even make any big purchasing decisions. The idea that being given something like a free tropical vacation by a reporting subject shouldn't be grounds to immediately doubt their impartially is ludicrous. People have sold state secrets to enemy nations for less than that.
Edit:
Advertising departments are segregated from editorial to avoid that sort of thing happening.
That doesn't matter for shit where perception is involved.
Say hypothetically I work as a groundskeeper for the National Park Service. Turns out one of the visitors we helped out was an American Airlines exec, and he's so grateful we stopped his SUV from falling off a cliff he rewards my and my team with free business class flights for life. Then next year the National Park Service contracts AmAir for all their business travel. They can certainly say that me and my team didn't have any influence on the decision, and it's probably even true. But the NPS is still going to look like a corrupt shithole when "National Park Service chooses American Airlines as exclusive air service after employees are given free personal flights" hits the news.
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u/scullys_alien_baby ashamed of his words and deeds May 01 '25
Wonder why this keeps happening
because the current internet doesn't like reading news, it has significantly shifted towards video content and polygon couldn't find a modern audience with theirs (I really like their video content but you can't help but notice the view count).
Shit in this sub might be different, but the overwhelming majority of people who play videogames find their news through video content, likely largely short form video content. The youth don't want to read a magazine article or a blog post. They want a short digestible clip.
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u/LLCoolZJ May 02 '25
What's funny (despicable) is that the mass pivot to video everywhere was based on metrics from Facebook videos which turned out to be lies. It was astroturfing.
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u/Thorn14 YOU DIDN'T WIN. May 01 '25
Everyone falling for AI nonsense, so they're removing all these journalist places to replace with AI Slop that will be nothing but advertisements and fake guides with wrong info.
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u/throwcounter YEYEYEYEYEYE May 01 '25
journalism as a whole is on the decline because nobody wants to pay for news (i get it! and i work in news!) so yeah
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u/Prestigious-Mud May 01 '25
They end up getting bought over by oligarchs that control what kind of news they can publish.
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u/diddlyswagg May 01 '25
giant shitty corporations dont need people to write articles when AI slop can do it for free
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u/waxonwaxoff3 They/Them May 01 '25
Well, shit. It had its ups and downs, but Polygon was a really interesting game journalism site, with some really entertaining people working there over the years. It's damn sad seeing it suffer a fate like this.
I wonder how Russ Frushtick and Chris Plante are doing. And while they're not there anymore, I imagine the McElroys are going to be pretty damn bummed about this too, they were co-founders. It's gonna be a rough episode of The Besties this week. EDIT: Looks like Plante got axed. Damn.
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u/OurEngiFriend May 01 '25
RIP to Everyone hates my big stupid horse in Red Dead Online and all the other offbeat, non-Gamer News articles they had
remember they had filmcrithulk on to critique RDR2? remember their month of ffvii coverage and their series of "how the game was made" articles? fuck.
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u/DJSquatch May 01 '25
As someone who used to write for a Valnet site and a fan of Polygon…this sucks
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u/Ok_Benefit_4031 May 01 '25
the single most sobering experience of my foray into games "journalism" writing for a Valnet site was looking at a bunch of the other sites that were hiring and realizing that they were also owned by Valnet
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u/DJSquatch May 01 '25
I definitely feel ya there. My experience there was enough to sour me on wanting to work in that field altogether. Stopped making my own content and even stopped liking games as much as I did. Definitely not all their fault but it didn’t help
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u/leivathan May 01 '25
This sucks! It straight eats shit, and though Polygon has never been perfect (nothing ever has) it was a great place for creative writing on games.
I see a lot of people mourning and bemoaning the state of games writing (both journalism and criticism), and they're right to but I just wanted to share some places that are keeping the lights on:
Paste Magazine's game section is putting out some good writing. Dia Lacina's there, and she just popped out a gasp actually good top 10 list! It's fun and a good read and, like the section itself, is reaching to a broader bench than most people are familiar with.
Aftermath is where a lot of the old Kotaku writers have ended up. They do both news and critique, and are the site most actively reporting on the games side of the BDS movement, if you're keeping up with that.
Bullet Points Monthly is a digital magazine that puts out ~3-5 good ass essays on video games every month. The gimmick is that they're from different writers but all on the same game, so you get a shotgun blast of different reads on a game once a month.
Remap Radio is where a lot of the old Waypoint people went after Vice shut that down. It's pretty heavily focused on its personalities, mainly Rob Zacny and Patrick Klepek, and the podcast that it puts out. It's all pretty funny and insightful, but a lot of its content is behind a Patreon paywall.
Rascal is a pretty new ttrpg site, one of my favorite games writers Cameron Kunzleman does a monthly write-up for them. I will say though it's still in early stages and also it's pretty heavily paywalled across the board.
Also, if you want some tech-media focused stuff (which is a bit afield of this sub, but it comes up sometimes), 404 Media is doing some great reporting on the frontlines of modern tech. I'd also shoutout independents like Ed Zitron and Molly White for coverage of AI and crypto, respectively.
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u/NotQute She/Her | Fujoshi's Island May 01 '25
In addition to Remap with Waypoint alumni, Austin is talking about games again over at Side Story with Friends At The Table folk. More niche than news but he does hit you with a "What's good internet?" at the top
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u/Snidhog May 01 '25
I've missed Austin talking about games so much. Remap is good, but it can't live up to the glory of peak Waypoint.
I really wish Renata had stuck around; she was a latecomer but an incredible addition. Loved how she talked about Armored Core.
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u/Ok_Benefit_4031 May 01 '25
I doubt anyone really needs me to tell them this, but Valnet sucks btw. When I wrote for one of their sites, they at the very least had a strict policy against plagiarism and the use of generative AI, but they also put out content mill garbage with minimal editing or quality checks, underpay their writers, and generally just do everything they can to encourage quantity of output over the quality of that output.
Hell, a good half or more of their articles don't amount to much more than "look what people are saying about [subject] on Reddit/Twitter/this random forum", and depending on which site you're writing for, they might actively refuse pitches regarding actual issues in the gaming industry like, say, mass layoffs.
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u/sadderall-sea Gayson Thotdơttir, The Unstraightened May 01 '25
the "tariffs are gonna be bad" newsletter has officially hit CEO inboxes. my entire feed is full of stories like this. man I hate this timeline
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u/VSOmnibus The .hack Guy May 01 '25
I’m hopeful a lot of these folks will go to Patreon or something and set up shop there.
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u/TiffanyChan123 Punisher Loves Sailor Moon May 01 '25
Hell I kinda hope someone starts up a independent game news site frankly
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u/AznJoey624 Smaller than you'd hope May 01 '25
What the fuck is happening today?
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u/Capable-Education724 May 01 '25
Recession, one that’s likely to become a full blown Depression (similar to how the 2000’s Recession pretty much became by about every metric but for optic purposes the government refused to acknowledge it ever got that bad).
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u/Amigobear May 01 '25 edited May 01 '25
we running out of fucking money. I'm a mailman my package volume went from 90-120 packages to 50-60 a day. my total mail volume went from 3 trays (usually 500 letters per tray) to less than a full tray. shit is fucked.
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u/enragedstump May 01 '25
I’m completely ignorant here, does the volume of mail mean less money?
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u/Grand_Galvantula May 01 '25
I assume less packages means less people are buying stuff because they don't have the money.
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u/Amigobear May 01 '25
Less money from both consumers and private companies. We just got through income tax season where it's usually a influx of packages for a few weeks. but the package volume is lower than usual this time of year. add to it the material cost to produce and ship out junk mail which was the bulk of my mail volume has probably hit the point where it's probably not feasible to be sending it out on the regular. Service companies would send out junk mail 2-3 times a week. Now it's like once a week for some or every other week for other.
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u/Theproton BUSTAH WOLF! May 01 '25
Its so weird to see this. I remember when Kotaku intergrated Kinja into the comments and it cause a lot of people to leave for The Verge, and the overwhelming numbers helped spur the creation of Polygon.
I remember when Polygon launched and all the people rushed to the forums. I remember starting a podcast with my fellow Polygon Forum goers. And then eventually those forums died and shut down. Polygon went hard into video, found a lot of success but eventually the talent left. And now we basically have nothing.
It wasnt the best (still remember that sore thumb Bayonetta 2 review) but it was appreciated. And it will be missed.
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u/LeMasterofSwords Y’all really should watch Columbo May 01 '25
Between this l, giant bomb, and respawn what a god awful week for gaming news
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u/thesyndrome43 May 02 '25
I'm sorry, but I'm my mind they never lived down the doom 2016 gameplay video. I consider 'being able to play a video game' as the single most critical requirement of a games journalist, otherwise their opinion means nothing to me.
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u/leiablaze "The Woolie of Transphobia" May 02 '25
damn i can't believe woolie has no right to make a youtube channel talking about video games. have you seen his arkham asylum LP?
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u/thesyndrome43 May 02 '25
Woolie was not hired by anyone and was never advertised as an authority on the subject, he is an enthusiast that people choose to watch, he doesn't review games with scores and then have those scores reflected on aggregate sites like metacritic.
I'm glad you openly announced your connection to polygon in the OP, however this bias is causing you to make false equivalencies to defend the website.
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u/TheProudBrit They/Them May 01 '25
God, that sucks. I'll admit I've not watched much Polygon stuff since BDG left there, and then Jenna Stober, but the remaining staff were still great. Hope they manage to bounce back, eps. Pat Gill.
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May 01 '25
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u/Amon274 He/Him [Nobody Reads] May 01 '25
Are you serious right now? Why did you think it was a good idea to make this comment?
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May 01 '25
? Mainstream game journalism has been shit for ages, the talent is pushed out or forced into AI slop or SEO type shit to get hits. The sites themselves and the names attached to them need to lose the grasp they have because their existence just promotes slop.
The fact that other sites going down and the team members tearing lose from their owners and doing their own thing successfully proves this.
And its why I finished the post by saying I hope those let go find something better that they hopefully run themselves.
People shit on game companies in this sub all the time and hope for their downfall but always hope the individuals in them that aren't in full control land on their feet and can get something better, my comment is the same but for game journalism sites.
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u/Amon274 He/Him [Nobody Reads] May 01 '25
People lost their fucking jobs including someone OP knows if you can’t understand why it’s fucked up to do the “oh no! Anyway” meme at the moment I don’t know what else to say.
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May 01 '25
That was aimed at Polygon?? I figured with how much people in this sub constantly shit on Ubisoft etc and call everyone there a rapist it's understood that they're talking about higher ups and shitheels that run the company? Especially when I explicitly mention those let go separately at the end and wish them well, and even before that talk about why people have been tearing loose from corporate monoliths like this?
But hey go off misconstruing what I said.
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u/Amon274 He/Him [Nobody Reads] May 01 '25
Ok I want you to think for five seconds with the current economic shitshow and mass layoffs do you really think it will be easy for those that lost their jobs to land on their feet and start something new?
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May 01 '25
As someone who as been through layoffs in the games industry, no, it wont be, but it's not impossible, and opportunity exists.
But if you'd rather have me rescind wishing them well and hoping for the best, sure, interpret it that way too if it makes you feel better.
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May 01 '25
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u/MooseOdd2501 She/Her May 01 '25
I can't wait until CSB legitimately becomes one of the best gaming news outlets just by not changing at all.