Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
The ever-dwindling field of games media has a new player: Walmart. Restart is new website run by Moonrock — a marketing company specializing in bringing brands to video games — and sponsored by the largest retailer in the United States.
A new games site sponsored by Walmart doesn’t seem inherently bad, especially as the games media landscape continues to shrink. Publications are shutting down, ad revenues are drying up, and existing sites now operate with fewer and fewer employees. Earlier this year, Ziff Davis, IGN’s parent company, acquired a handful of media sites including Eurogamer; Rock, Paper, Shotgun; and VG247. In the time since, there have been staff departures and layoffs including buyouts offered to employees earlier this month. According to a report in Aftermath, this latest round of buyouts has apparently left GamesIndustry.biz, a site that’s been around for over 20 years, with only one full-time employee.
Restart’s business model isn’t wholly unique. Before it was unceremoniously shut down earlier this year, Game Informer magazine was owned and operated by GameStop, and for decades Nintendo ran its own magazine. Other websites like IGN, Polygon, and The Verge also run sponsored content and include affiliate links in articles. To survive in the current digital media landscape, the support of deep-pocketed individuals or corporations is all but required. In this regard, Restart is just like any other publication.
According to its editorial mission, “Restart is sponsored by Walmart, but we operate as an independent site.” The mission statement explains that while its articles will feature affiliate links to Walmart products, the site itself will receive no portion of the sale. “We hope you can see this gives us zero incentive to provide biased review scores or other information about a game.”
But Restart is also entering a media landscape where the wall between corporate interests and editorial independence has become perilously thin, and with a few rare exceptions, games media has slowly shifted away from providing readers thoughtful discussion and critique to providing a product that can be monetized to hell and back. That driving ethos is clearly outlined in a post by Moonrock on its Substack. “Restart.run serves as a dynamic hub where gaming content meets retail opportunities, allowing gamers to transition effortlessly from discovering new games to purchasing them on Walmart’s platform.”