For reference, they own:
- Game Rant
- TheGamer
- Polygon
- FextraLife
- OpenCritic
- DualShockers
- Hardcore Gamer
Some well known sites in there, but hardly ‘most’ of gaming journalism.
this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
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This also leaves out all the game journalism that isn‘t even on most people‘s radars. Namely non-english game journalism. That‘s a huge part most people naturally know very little about.
Are they why Polygon is the gaming equivalent of entertainment slop instead of being about games?
Polygon used to be great RIP
I only used gaming magazines pre internet. After that, forums, eventually Steam reviews, and occasionally an independent YouTuber review. Never even heard of these sites, except polygon. Who is using these sites today ?
Most? They own like four blogs, and recently, How-To Geek, which has always been kinda shit.
I don't have any of them bookmarked, but I've read CBR (comic book blog) when their links are posted.
I feel like Gawker is bigger. I used to read a bunch of their sites. Reddit hated them for a minute because they doxxed one of their paedophile mods, but I never had a problem with them. Kotaku is kind of mid for a gaming site, but they cover a lot of ground. I still read Gizmodo from time to time, but it's very mid.
I read Ars Technica, which is owned by Condé Nast, which owns Reddit. Ars Technica's Aurich (not their main guy as I once thought, but one of their most prolific posting staff members, calls himself "The Director of Many Things") is very transparent about Ars's relationship with Condé Nast, saying CN basically lets them do their own thing. I believe him, and Ars has a good amount of integrity. Their community, however, is a lot like Reddit, especially since they got up/down voting, they tend to bury opinions that go against the hive mind (but hilariously, they quote it and the quote post gets upvoted, so they really aren't censoring shit, but they get that power and the blood goes straight to the little head). But the site itself is pretty good. They did have that mishap where the blogger used AI to make a post and it misquoted a guy, but they fired the guy who did that, so they're still good in my book.
Nothing to do with gaming or tech, but the main thing I associate Condé Nast with is the discrimination against brown and female Youtube hosts at Bon Appétit. Fuck Condé Nast, even if they aren't actively interfering with Ars Technica.
Also, at this point I don't even care if the headline about Valnet owning "most" is accurate; I will always upvote threads raising awareness about the dangers of media consolidation.
Who reads these sites these days anyway
Seems like a complete dead internet circlejerk to rip off advertisers. No humans involved except for siphoning off money.
And Ziff Davis owns the rest.