Breaking: Polygon sold to Valnet and hit with massive layoffs Here's @ethangach.bsky.social report. kotaku.com/polygon-sold... - ThreadSky

zackzwiezen.com • 1 day ago

Breaking: Polygon sold to Valnet and hit with massive layoffs

Here's @ethangach.bsky.social report.

https://kotaku.com/polygon-sold-vox-media-valnet-layoffs-digital-gaming-1851778655

Comments

donutshop.bsky.social•1 day ago

Gaming news site ruined by private equity reports on gaming news site ruined by private equity 💀

dankeevy.bsky.social•1 day ago

Boooo!

transtastic77.bsky.social•10 hours ago

More diversity would have saved them. This is what caving to breeder chuds gets you.

thepmann.bsky.social•1 day ago

Well, that’s them proper fucked.

thementalstone.bsky.social•1 day ago

The Academy Award nominated director of District 09 has a chance to do a really cool thing now that Game Informer is back in business

sniffit.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yep...boycott all Valnet stuff...so that now includes Polygon.

They do nothing but produce absolute fucking trash and abuse their workforce.

tomhopkins.xyz•1 day ago

I thought Vox made money?
Horrible on all fronts, RIP Polygon.

tomhopkins.xyz•1 day ago

Would have been better off figuring out how to monetize more effectively OR keeping/reducing the brand and folding a core team of games writers into The Verge.

tomhopkins.xyz•1 day ago

I get selling or shuttering an underperforming business unit (as the bean-counters would put it) but they've let a rival get hold of a prestige/core brand (who will likely ruin it) while reducing their breadth of quality content.

thatoldbear.bsky.social•1 day ago

We can no longer expect capitalism to work as expected - every business over a certain scale now seems to become a cancer cell dedicated to collecting toxic debt to dump it in other businesses in startling ways to destroy everything around them. It's just a scam.

tomhopkins.xyz•1 day ago

Agreed, capitalism may well be a ponzi scheme

wvgg.co•1 day ago

“who’s valnet?” lol buckle up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valnet

theanimationvoice.com•1 day ago

*reads the first few paragraphs*
WOW

udaimon.bsky.social•1 day ago

did not recognize the name valnet so i did some digging and found their wikipedia entry. Holy shit they are evil.

foulwarlock.bsky.social•1 hour ago

Note how only the worst, most annoying people are happy abt this

forgeenjoyer.bsky.social•1 day ago

Fucking awful, Valnet is hot garbage. I used to write for one of their shitty websites when I was in a really tight spot

thirteenthstory.bsky.social•1 day ago

omfgggg

tendog.bsky.social•1 day ago

polygone

themewl.bsky.social•1 day ago

"was making between $15-20 per article of 500-1000 words and that's including the "bonus" I got for being good enough to have "self publish status." They continued to pile on more requirements to the point that I was making maybe $5/hour before I just decided to walk"
https://www.reddit.com/r/freelanceWriters/comments/17zbsnt/opinions_on_valnet/

celestinakitty.bsky.social•1 day ago

why are people taking pay for so fucking little jesus christ know your fucking worth

*foams mouth*

alchemyprime.bsky.social•1 day ago

This matches with my experience pretty well.

solidslack.bsky.social•1 day ago

I can vouch for this 100% unfortunately

ryanwritesgood.bsky.social•1 day ago

I third this statement.

ghostrydr1172.bsky.social•1 day ago

@odstspartan.bsky.social

Bro, I'm sorry if you were hit by this. 😔

odstspartan.bsky.social•1 day ago

I was but a freelancer but my heart goes to all those who were affected by this. They deserve the world.

stanielxyz.bsky.social•1 day ago

stanielxyz.bsky.social•1 day ago

Man its so ironic alot you say CEO is chief of wage theft. But all you journalists/writers at polygon have done is taken paychecks for years writing for 0 engagement hence why it closed down.

L O L. The world is healing.

rozaduck.bsky.social•6 hours ago

It didn’t close down — it was making enough money to be worth buying by a for-profit company. That would imply the writers have done well.

quipp.bsky.social•1 day ago

you work for yourself?

stanielxyz.bsky.social•20 hours ago

No I actually provide real value that's why I have a job and have no difficulty jumping jobs?

Difficult concept to understand for some I guess.

silenthillx.bsky.social•1 day ago

shut up nazi

papajuiceman.bsky.social•1 day ago

i hate this stupid world we live in

wakleskade.bsky.social•1 day ago

What a fucking bummer. Don’t these non-creatives ever tire of disrupting people’s lives and ruining great media outlets. When is it enough?! God, I hate this country.

handle.uxel.com•23 hours ago

Polygon wasn't good media.

wakleskade.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Okie dokie.

bryantolivas.bsky.social•1 day ago

Devastating. Sick and tired of corporate leadership doing stuff like this.

subjunctivitis.bsky.social•1 day ago

fucking hell

puggsy.bsky.social•1 day ago

We need to get private equity out of gaming.

tcrimson05t.bsky.social•1 day ago

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/valnet-sues-thewrap-for-libel-over-investigative-article-about-sweatshop-conditions-at-entertainment-sites/ar-AA1DWwTz?ocid=BingNewsSerp&PC=EMMX01

klank.bsky.social•13 hours ago

i've been wary of valnet and anything they manage since fireb0rn's video detailing the working conditions there (which was of course shortly taken down by valnet for "copyright infringement"). haven't been able to get my hands on it since, unfortunately

imoffended.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Remember when polygon called Colin moriarty sexist and put him in an article with racists?

stroggs.bsky.social•19 hours ago

Well, good riddance.

borbagatodonorte.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Is like a cancer being cut from the game world.

rebeckeronie.bsky.social•1 day ago

Fuck

candooo.bsky.social•9 hours ago

And nothing of value was lost…

scarclan.bsky.social•1 day ago

I made the hard choice to unfollow Polygon due to this.

Horrible news to here and the gaming industry cannot catch a break as of late.

xcwatcher.bsky.social•19 hours ago

Looking at their numbers of people clicking their site over the year- it was already dying. Finally just croaked.

devoureroftime.bsky.social•1 day ago

stormrider.tv•1 day ago

me: who the hell is Valnet
me: [googles]
me: oh
me: [reads more]
me: ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
me: [reads more]
me:

stormrider.tv•1 day ago

this first paragraph from wikipedia is a *trip*

wavid.bsky.social•1 day ago

Ho-ly shit

theporkwizard.bsky.social•1 day ago

hottopic.bsky.social•1 day ago

oh my god that's somehow significantly worse than i could've imagined

stormrider.tv•1 day ago

the sadness kicks in when you reach the list of sites they own and realize they're all once-good websites that they have purposely ground into a fine paste of AI drek and clickbait farms

atomicpwrdrobot.bsky.social•1 day ago

So is "foosball player students" just a euphemism for "guys who were in the same frat"

w9mhz.bsky.social•1 day ago

Good lord

wormfood-local-510.bsky.social•1 day ago

Why is it that when you’re checking background on the worst guys you’ve ever met, a shocking amount of dark money tied to Israel shows up

wormfood-local-510.bsky.social•1 day ago

Am I saying “Jews run the media”? Worse! I’m saying capitalists run the media, borders are a myth, and imperialist state entities crawl around in the sewers of every corner of the globe!

hellostarshine.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Yep. It's not Jewish people, it's imperialists. The problem, as usual, is colonialism and capitalism. It's almost like these things are evil, but who can say.

wormfood-local-510.bsky.social•13 hours ago

certainly not I! In many respects, that would be a crime!

dragonnexus.bsky.social•1 day ago

*indulged in massive layoffs

Layoffs aren't some nebulous thing that strikes a company out of nowhere. It's an active choice.

cursedscreensaver.bsky.social•1 day ago

Fuck Valnet

swesteel.bsky.social•1 day ago

The plunder of functioning companies continues.

satanicmechanic.bsky.social•1 day ago

They intentionally buy/gut/sell their own competition, which antitrust laws would be updated to compensate for if congress wasnt headed by 80 year old insider trading enthusiasts

hattiejosh.bsky.social•1 day ago

This was done because Polygon's former owner didn't want to deal with those oh so pesky unions. Boycott Vox Media

odflip.bsky.social•1 day ago

What has been done to Polygon today is a fucking crime!

mario-y.bsky.social•1 day ago

This sucks. Polygon was a great site and now, who knows?

Any of their writers here on Bluesky who are a good follow?

mario-y.bsky.social•1 day ago

I ended up following everyone on here. Except polygon of course

https://go.bsky.app/STm95qX

ryanwritesgood.bsky.social•1 day ago

Also interested in this information.

soupness.bsky.social•1 day ago

Oh no.

sleepawaychamp.bsky.social•1 day ago

anyone who wants to be engaged in actually making things should collectivize and then stone anyone who offers to handle the business side of things “for” you

hellostarshine.bsky.social•13 hours ago

we keep trying this and keep failing. SO many sites and orgs claim they'll "never" sell, but the truth is that eventually someone will, and if they don't, their competition will do everything they can to make their business hell. it sucks.

sleepawaychamp.bsky.social•13 hours ago

i’d be interested to learn more about worker co-ops for publishing. a lot of the games podcasts i listen to have that model in practice but i don’t know of print outfits that tried that. if you know any, please share.

hellostarshine.bsky.social•13 hours ago

since im self-pub, it's just kind of just me and a bunch of other self-pubs showing our audience each others books and jumping from site to site as they all sell and start refusing NSFW authors (which then collapses their business, which then-)

sleepawaychamp.bsky.social•13 hours ago

i work at a small art studio which we unionized, but i always wonder what would have happened if it was collectivized from the jump.