The sale of Polygon to a Canadian pornographer final yr may need felt to some on the common gaming web site like being NPCs in a Hitman degree. A cloak-and-dagger procession of NDAs clued in a number of the workers to an ominous change in possession coming within the days forward, however nobody knew who else knew, or the total particulars of what the sale would entail. “I didn’t know the way many individuals have been beneath NDA,” Polygon‘s former deputy editor Maddy Myers just lately instructed me (full disclosure: Myers was additionally beforehand the deputy editor of Kotaku). “I didn’t know who knew and who didn’t, and I didn’t know that everybody who wasn’t beneath NDA wasn’t going to be retained. However it did appear suspicious, as a result of I used to be like, I do know not everybody is aware of in regards to the sale. I don’t know why some individuals are being instructed forward of time. This appears fishy to me, and it was a fishy, bizarre time interval.”
Valnet, the press farm that ended up buying Polygon from Jim Bankoff’s Vox Media for an undisclosed sum, ended up shedding a lot of the workers, together with all of its union staff. The positioning was fully uprooted in a single day whereas the brand new house owners rushed in a workforce of underpaid freelancers to start out instantly churning out new articles.
“They basically instructed us simply sufficient to make us really feel prefer it was our solely possibility to come back over,” stated Zoë Hannah, Polygon‘s former video games editor. “The best way I’ve described it since then is that I really feel like each of us have been used as bargaining chips for this sale. They actually wished managers to come back over in order that they might hit the bottom working with these contractors that they’d already lined up, we came upon later.” we’ll launch mothership.weblog in its remaining kind on jan. 26, that includes tales by superb writers like @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social, @nicoleclark.bsky.social, @susanapolo.bsky.social, @supercrip1994.bsky.social, & @applecider.bsky.social. you possibly can subscribe early for a LIFETIME 15% OFF low cost!! — Maddy Myers 🏳️🌈 (@midimyers.com) 2026-01-09T17:06:58.611Z Myers and Hannah have been spared whereas over 30 of their colleagues have been laid off, however staying on the web site was untenable. “It was a couple of week and a half in the place I spotted, like, okay, yeah, this, this isn’t going to work for me,” Myers stated. “I’m actually personally depressed about how many individuals are gone. I don’t be ok with changing them. It really was like my very own private emotional state at the moment, I used to be like, I want a reset.”
Hannah confronted Vox HR after the sale about feeling misled through the run-up. “I instructed them this was in dangerous religion, I really feel like I used to be not given any choices right here.” She stated the weeks that adopted led to extra disillusionment with the scenario, describing her remaining month on the web site as “kicking and screaming.” Each Myers and Hannah ended up leaving Polygon in June.
They may have tried to seek out different jobs in digital video games media or, as has change into more and more frequent for skilled expertise, ditched the sphere completely. As an alternative, they determined to make their very own online game web site. It might analyze video games particularly via the lens of gender and id at a time when these views have been squeezed out of different shops beneath stress from the all-homogenizing algorithm. It might be self-owned so it might by no means be offered out from beneath them. It might be known as Mothership.
Mothership = Teen Vogue however for video video games “It’s Teen Vogue, however for video video games, a little bit of a bittersweet pitch now that Teen Vogue has been fully gutted,” Myers stated. “I really feel like that’s a part of the pitch as nicely. It’s like what The Mary Sue was, however what if it didn’t should publish dozens and dozens of tales a day, and it had fewer tales a day and it had extra reporting and extra criticism that you simply didn’t have to write down in 20 minutes?”
Mothership can have podcasts, brief kind video, and even a e-newsletter, however it should nonetheless primarily be a web site, one the place readers go every day to learn sensible issues from sensible folks and that embraces identities and views which are nonetheless radically underrepresented throughout the remainder of the video games media house. What the pair is referring to as the location’s launch subject will embrace the work of Mary Sue cofounder Susana Polo and different former Polygon colleagues like Nicole Clark and Nicole Carpenter. Subscriptions beginning at $7 a month (there’s a lifetime low cost for individuals who join forward of the January 26 launch) will fund high quality journalism and criticism that doesn’t should feed a gauntlet of show advertisements with countless clicks. “There will probably be no programmatic advertisements in anyway on Mothership, which is badge of honor,” Hannah stated. “Folks bear in mind what The Mary Sue was like when it had a workers of 5 as an alternative of a workers of 1, and so they bear in mind what Teen Vogue was like and so they additionally imagine within the thought, and particularly after I speak to ladies I do know who play video games, and queer folks I do know who play video games, I simply see the sunshine of their eyes once they hear this, and so they’re like, ‘I simply need this so badly, and I imagine in it a lot,’ and that’s occurred a lot extra typically than I anticipated,” Myers stated.
She continued, “I feel while you give you an thought like this, you’re like, ‘nicely, I’ll simply write for me. I’ll write for the me up to now that wished a web site like this and it’s okay if perhaps six folks learn it,’ , like, that’s okay. However there have been so many individuals which are like, ‘no, I really need this,’ that it’s given me and Zoe much more confidence that this is likely to be an actual thought. We should always truly do that, we must always cease interviewing for different jobs and put apart all of our different issues that we have been type of interested by doing and take this significantly.” Mothership is the newest in a collection of subscription-backed impartial video games media shops which are blazing an alternate path via the present collapse of the web due to social media monopolies, altering media consumption habits, and the proliferation of AI slop. These embrace new ventures like Aftermath and Second Wind in addition to long-standing manufacturers that just lately went indie like Big Bomb and Digital Foundry. It’s additionally the third to come back out of Polygon sale, with former workers additionally founding the web sites Rogue and Submit Video games.
That final one is {a magazine} podcast collection by former Polygon EIC Chris Plante, who interviewed Myers and Hannah about their new web site and the historical past of ladies in video games media for the newest episode. Notably, out of all of those gaming websites, Mothership is likely one of the few not staffed completely and even primarily by straight dudes. At a time when the nationwide paper of document overtly pontificates about whether or not feminism destroyed the fashionable office and indignant on-line mobs embrace anti-woke conspiracies, Mothership isn’t shying away from gaming inside an identity-first framework. “We all know that video games journalists and critics who’ve coated the intersection between gaming and gender, our bodies, and id have confronted severe backlash up to now, and the contributors right here at Mothership have confronted it ourselves, too,” the location’s announcement reads. “Along with your assist, we’ll construct a sustainable enterprise that may afford rigorous modifying processes, sensitivity readers, and authorized counsel when crucial for high-risk investigations of high-profile video games studios and figures.” “Feminism, I really feel like, has change into a unclean phrase in lots of circles,” Myers instructed me. “It’s [considered] cringe and I do really feel like we’re in a very, actually bizarre place with it proper now, and it’s unusual to me as a author who’s been doing all of it alongside and has watched all of these completely different phases occur, some progress, after which some blowback, after which some progress, after which some blowback. I really feel like I’ve seen that all through my profession, and I very a lot really feel like we’re in a blowback part proper now, however that’s a part of why I’m like, we have to hold doing this. We’ve to maintain making an attempt.”
