Polygon, Vox Media’s video games website, has been acquired by Valnet, a company founded and helmed by Hassan Youssef, a former pornography mogul and the co-founder of the popular adult entertainment site Brazzers.
The news, which broke first on social media via various Polygon writers and editors saying that they suddenly don’t have a job, came as a shock to both Polygon staff and readers. Media in general has been suffering from regular layoffs for years, and video game publications have been hit especially hard recently with legendary magazine Game Informer shutting down in 2024 (and recently being revived) and layoffs at Gamespot and other publications. But Polygon, a brand that Vox built from scratch, has a large staff, excellent reporters, a sizable YouTube presence, and relatively less clownish leadership than new media counterpart VICE, did not seem like it was about to be sold and lay off much of its staff.
Valnet media owns several entertainment sites including Screen Rant and Collider, as well as a number of video game sites like TheGamer, DualShockers, and Game Rant. In March, The Wrap published a story which accused Valnet of exploitative working conditions. Valnet filed a lawsuit against The Wrap over the article which it claimed was inaccurate and defamatory.
As the lore has it, Youssef’s story began in 2003 as part of a foosball enthusiasts group including his brother Sam and fellow Concordia University students Matt Keezer and Stephane Manos. They saw an opportunity to make a lot of money in internet porn and started Jugg World, Ass Listing, KeezMovies and XXX Rated Chicks. Eventually, they turned Jugg World into an affiliate network, and opened Brazzers as a pay site.
Some might attribute the popularity of giant boobs in porn to these guys’ single-minded search for cheap and easy profit; former Mindgeek CEO Feras Antoon told New York Magazine they focused on breasts “because the big-tits niche was so cheap,” and then “they saw, wow, that tit niche is huge. Then they realized that the MILF niche—the older-woman niche—is even bigger. And they became the masters of the big-tit–MILF niche.”
Sam and Hassan Youssef founded Mansef, one of the first "thumbnail gallery post" websites for porn. To summarize a lot of acquisitions: they sold Mansef to Fabian Thylmann and it became Manwin; Thylmann kept gobbling up sites and bought Digital Playground, YouPorn, Twistys, GayTube, SexTube, and others before catching tax evasion charges and selling it all to Antoon and David Tassilo who changed the name to Mindgeek and kept the buying spree going including with its tentpole property Pornhub; Antoon and Tassilo resigned in 2022 amid a slew of accusations of abuse on its sites and private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners bought it in 2023, changing the name to Aylo.
Sam and Hassan went on to cofound Valnet. Hassan serves as its current CEO while Sam is a board member and also the founder and CEO of Valsoft, an enterprise software company.
“This moment marks a powerful reaffirmation of our deep commitment to gaming, a space we’ve passionately invested in for years,” Youssef, who is now Valnets founder and SEO, said in a press release on Thursday. “The addition of Polygon not only strengthens our editorial muscle but also amplifies our ability to deliver unmatched value to both audiences and advertisers. At Valnet, we’re not just participants in this space; we are its undisputed leader, and today, that leadership has never felt stronger.”
Whatever value Youssef sees in Polygon apparently doesn’t include many of the people who made the site what it is.
