Record Market, Shrinking Newsrooms: Who Pays for Games Journalism Now?
Games made more money than ever in 2025, yet Polygon was sold and gutted, GameSpot lost another team and a Walmart-funded site let its whole editorial staff go. Here is how the business of writing about games broke, and what is growing in the cracks.
Here is a strange pair of numbers. Newzoo estimated a record $201.6 billion global games market at the end of 2025. In the same period, some of the best-known names in games journalism were sold, cut to the bone or shut down.
The players have never spent more. The people who write about what they play have rarely had less to work with. This is the story of how games media became one of the toughest corners of the industry, told through four outlets.
Polygon: sold, then emptied
Polygon launched in 2012 as Vox Media's third publication, with big ambitions for long features and video. Around May 1, 2025, Vox Media sold it to Valnet, the Canadian publisher behind Game Rant, TheGamer and FextraLife.
The sale came with deep cuts. Many Polygon staff were laid off or left, and those laid off were members of the Vox Media Union (WGAE). The departures included co-founder and editor-in-chief Chris Plante, special projects editor Matt Leone and senior reporter Nicole Carpenter. Polygon continued, but as part of a very different machine: Valnet is known for high-volume, search-driven publishing at scale.
Even inside Valnet, the model has not meant stability. TheGamer, one of its own sites, has also gone through widespread editorial layoffs.
GameSpot: the fifth round
GameSpot, founded in 1996, is one of the oldest names in online games coverage. It has passed through many owners, including ZDNet, CNET and CBS. In October 2022, Fandom bought it from Red Ventures together with Metacritic and TV Guide.
On July 9, 2026, Fandom cut GameSpot's entire commerce team, the people who write deals and buying guides: four staff and five freelancers, according to an affected worker. Chris Grant, the vice president of games and entertainment, went in the same round. GameSpot editor Mark Delaney said it was the fifth round of layoffs since Fandom took over. Fandom did not comment before the story was published.
The commerce cut is telling. For years, affiliate links on deals posts were sold as the steady money that would pay for reviews and reporting. When even that team goes, the model is in trouble.
Giant Bomb and the independent turn
That makes the next twist neat. Giant Bomb, by then a Fandom sister site to GameSpot, hit its own crisis in May 2025. Several high-profile staff left after a podcast episode that mocked Fandom's brand-safety guidelines, the rules about what advertisers will sit next to, was taken down. Later that month, the site went independent.
It is part of a wider move toward reader-funded outlets owned by the people who write them. They earn less from advertising and depend on subscriptions and memberships instead. That makes them smaller, but much harder for an owner to sell off.
Restart: when a retailer runs the newsroom
The oddest experiment came from a retailer. Restart.run launched in December 2024, built by the games marketing agency Moonrock and openly funded by Walmart, with the early tagline "independent gaming news powered by Walmart". Purchase links went to Walmart's store; Restart said it earned 0% of those sales.
Around August 7, 2026, Restart's editor-in-chief Brandy Berthelson said the "entire editorial team" had been laid off. The staff page had listed 10 names. Walmart and Moonrock did not comment, and why it ended has not been explained.
Why it matters
Games are a $200 billion business, but the money mostly flows to platforms and publishers, not to the people who cover them. Outlets say search traffic has become harder to win and social platforms send fewer readers, while advertisers stay cautious. The large owners respond with volume and cuts; the survivors respond by asking readers to pay directly.
WGC's take: a healthy industry needs people outside it asking questions, testing claims and keeping history. Every round of cuts loses some of that. The good news is that the independents show readers will pay for writing they trust.
For one corner of the business where events still pay, see how Gamescom became the world's biggest games show, and how Summer Game Fest makes its money.