Mass Layoffs At Polygon, Major Gaming News Outlet

In what seems to be a recurring story these days, yet another gaming news outlet has hit rocky times. In 2023 iO9/Gizmodo shuttered its tabletop gaming coverage, and ComicBook.com follow suit last year, as did Dicebreaker. The latest in this list is Polygon, a site which--amongst many other things--covered a wide array of tabletop gaming news stories.

Polygon has been acquired by The Valnet Group, which owns outlets like Game Rant, Comic Book Resources, and others. Polygon founder Chris Plante posted on Bluesky -- "I'm no longer with Polygon. If you're hiring, please consider the many talented writers and editors now on the market. Every one of them deserves a spot on your staff. I won't be talking more about the sale because I wasn't involved. Going to hang out with my kid. Taking wins where I can."

Many Polygon staff members have publicly posted, saying that they have lost their jobs.

• “I’ll say more later, but I no longer have a job. I’m looking for work, as are so many of my amazing colleagues. I have lots of ideas and things I’d like to write. I’m really in shock.” - Nicole Carpenter, Senior Reporter.
• “I had a great time working at Polygon. Please let me know if you have any cool job openings!” - Michael McWherton, Senior Writer.

For those of us in the TTRPG industry, we'll be most familiar with the work of the senior editor for tabletop games, Charlie Hall, who said "I am no longer with Polygon, my home for nearly 13 years. I am proud of what my colleagues and I have accomplished over that period, and I am especially proud of the role the [Vox Media Union] and [Writer's Guild of America] played in it all. Organize. Now. I am immediately available for hire."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

was Polygon any good?
Anyone care to write up a post mortem?

It was a solid broad-spectrum gaming site, encompassing video games (obviously), but also board games, RPGs and some generally geeky stuff, sort of like Kotaku at Kotaku's peak.

And like Kotaku, it had a definite point of view, which meant that it's been a punching bag for one group of political gamers, although I think its POV was pretty mildly expressed as a general rule. (Compare to Rascal, which not only doesn't hide its politics, it makes sure you know them more or less immediately and isn't scared of any potential backlash.)

Polygon's weakness, IMO, was that it tried to cover too much of gaming. One site with light staffing can't really cover consoles and PC gaming and board games and RPGs and sometimes TV, comics and movies.

Given the broad appeal of gaming in 2025, it's frustrating that it's been so hard to make gaming sites work financially. That said, I it seems like Valnet is taking a hedge fund approach and buying these sites for their brands and then cutting costs by getting rid of the people who actually produced the content that make the brands, and just keeping up limited versions of the sites run by a handful of former staffers and freelancers and squeezing out ad revenue until the brands fall apart. So what happened to Polygon was likely not inevitable, but a near-death by parasitism.

It's particularly been very tough for me to watch Comic Book Resources -- a multiple Eisner award winning site! -- go down this path.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I had no idea there were gaming news outlets.

 

[Von Ether]

I had no idea there were gaming news outlets.

I am confused, you are on one right now.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I am confused, you are on one right now.

This is a news outlet?

Its just a gaming forum.

 

[Jensaarai]

This is a news outlet?

Its just a gaming forum.

is this a bit?

if you go up to the top, what's the title/logo of this forum say, right under "EN World"?

 

[Jd Smith1]

is this a bit?

if you go up to the top, what's the title/logo of this forum say, right under "EN World"?

Yeah. So?

Its a forum, complete with moderation and allowed/banned topics. its the electronic equivalent of bar talk; sure, you can hear news sitting at a bar, but that's neither the purpose nor the venue.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Yeah. So?

Its a forum, complete with moderation and allowed/banned topics. its the electronic equivalent of bar talk; sure, you can hear news sitting at a bar, but that's neither the purpose nor the venue.

Click on News.

Don't bother answering me back.

 

[FoolishFrost]

Well, I got laid off from my job as a game designer at the beginning of the year. Several friends got laid off at the beginning of the previous year. Many of us have no jobs in that industry. I realized what was happening when I looked at the reports of thousands, if not tens of thousands in the technical fields, across the whole of the entertainment industry, were laying off.

And grabbed a job at Walmart as a night shift stocker. They never lay off those. Ever, as far as I can tell. I can cover the mortgage and basic bills, and maybe I can get a contract for side work… I have not yet, but I’ll keep swinging. I want to say that I can make ends meet, but… eh. Getting your paycheck cut to 1/5 is a bit harsh.

The point is, beyond my whining… it’s bad, and now this is the ripple outward. News sites like this depended on the game studios to exist. Those begin the cannabalize themselves, the rest fall like dominos.

It’s bad, and it started a couple of years back. It’s just gotten bad enough to spread.

 

[Jahydin]

Honestly, I think "big name" video game journalism died with EGM (1988-2009). Everyone else is just paid advertising.

I stick to small YouTubers and people I know on social media.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Strange New Worlds season 2 shows how far Star Trek has come

The show better reflects 2023 than it does the roots of the sci-fi franchise

www.polygon.com

These kind of bad takes are why this sad kind of thing happened, the irony is that right now what the current year audience wants is more authentic and classic media, not excessive attempts to be contemporary.

Rick Berman once said that Star Trek was a period peice and not understanding that is why so much of what Kurtzman did failed.

Circling back to D&D, this is also a true point of D&D and it's setting, they too are in a sense period pieces, and trying to be excessively contemporary is a mistake, but one pushed by Polygon, and it lost its audience because it didn't understand it.

An example of this in the fantasy genre was the Willow series, folks found all the contemporary lingo in it jarring and unimmersive, and probably complained about that more than anything else. Don't get me wrong, you can take more liberties in fantasy then historical, FR is more sex positive and racially diverse then say Mideval Europe for example, but you have to do it in a way that respects the lore and the tone and the lingo of a place. Example instead of saying sex worker, coin lass, or coin lad.

Polygon didn't understand that and countless other issues and so lost a large chunk of its audience irony from being out of tune with current tastes. Their idea of their audience and the reality increasingly drifted apart.