If they go this far, it won't be a surprise if all of their articles is AI garbage
If I were Palworld I would be suing the pants off of GameRant and Valent. Textbook defamation with serious monetary and reputation damages.
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2026
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This would have been some Photoshop 101 shit.
Why has everyone forgotten how to manually manipulate photos?
The AI version is obviously not better.
I don't think the "reporters" are paid enough to care
It was probably quicker to ask an AI to edit it than to make the edit personally and the writers for these sites are paid very little to churn out multiple low effort articles a day
Nailed it.
Their boss probably wants to replace them with an agent too.
Any amount above $0.00 is WAY TOO much money to pay these "writers" to spend half-an hour a week hitting CTRL+X and CRTL+V.
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Hmm, not a good look for Gamerant, looks like I can safely ignore them and the numerous associated sites that Valent acquired.
looks like I can safely ignore them
Way ahead of you.
Continuing the tradition of superfluous one-upping from Reddit I see
I didn't realize that Gamerant was part of a dark web of bullshit, strings being pulled by Valent until I looked deeper due to this post. I never fully trusted most of the listed sites anyway because sometimes there was something off about their articles, as if they missed the point or were deliberately trying to steer the conversation in a bad direction. Should've opened my eyes a lot sooner.
The news blogs have not been kind to Palworld in general. The Verge posts headlines like "Pokemon rip-off Palworld removes features due to lawsuit they deserve to lose"
"Doom clone features guns" this is how these titles should be read. Or for a more modern example, calling Terraria "2d Minecraft" (derogatorily).
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Gamerant is owned by Valent, which bought out and owns all the following:
Android Police, Comic Book Resources, Collider, Hardcore Gamer, MovieWeb, OpenCritic, Screen Rant, Game Rant, DualShockers, TheGamer, XDA Developers, How-To Geek, GiveMeSport, And Polygon
All of the above, and I mean all of them, had huge layoffs and pivoted to AI articles and adhoc underpaid contractors:
previous and current Valnet employees claim the company prioritizes "mass quantity over quality to churn out mind-numbing SEO bait." Once websites are acquired by Valnet, the permanent staff are usually replaced by contractors, who are paid significantly less (reportedly around $19 for 1000 words at GameRant[3]) than the former tenured staff. One former contributor described Valnet website Collider to TheWrap as "a content mill, borderline like almost sweatshop-level", while another writer suggested that Valnet forced contractors to create "junky clickbait" content. Valnet writers who complain about payment, working conditions, or reveal payment rates are alleged to be blacklisted by the company
is this why xda became shit?
XDA has gotten so much worse in the last 6 months it is astounding. Some unreal work is being done to kill custom android ROMs.
XDA
Holy fucking shit no wonder it appears that they sold out
Cause they DID.
Oooh that's why all their articles in my feed are utter garbage, made the mistake of clicking a few and my god my phones built in feed is now inundated.
Like I mean easy to ignore and I don't even know if video game "journalism" even counts as something worth reading most of the time anyways not that kind of blows.
You shouldn't be allowed to own that much stuff. Simple solution.
Thankfully there's the FTC and its antitrust law! /$
I had to double take at freaking XDA!!! I had no idea.
Valnet writers who [...] reveal payment rates are alleged to be blacklisted by the company
That sounds flat out illegal.
ah man that sucks. I kinda like XDA and polygon.
Yeah XDA is (or I guess, was) invaluable for custom ROMs for Android. There's a huge modding/coding community on XDA.
Sadly the wild west days of custom ROMs is mostly over :(
Meh, the scene for custom softwares on PS2s, phones, psps, PS3 Emulation, etc are still going strong. We only really just figured out how to emulate the PS3 a couple of years ago.
You say "wild west" as if they were doing something uncivilized, but running the code you choose is nothing more than exercising your property rights.
The marginalization/destruction of custom ROMs isn't civilization catching up, it's totalitarianism closing in.
Camera: broken
Wifi radio: broken
Accelerometer broken: WIP no ETA.
Bugs: you tell me
Think this is what they meant
Another way of viewing the use of "wild west" was exactly that, the lack of over regulation and a more hands off government. In reality it wasn't the utopia some want to make it out to be as slang like "snake oil salesmen" alludes.
link to what ur quoting,?
poor Polygon
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Gamerant and all of its sister sites are just the worst writing on the internet. Shitty takes and shitty business practices.
And some of the most egregious and misleading click bait titles for their articles as well. I can often spot a Gamerant article just from the title before I even see the URL.
Is there any legit reason gamerant couldn't just use the thumbnail from the video?
Obviously they did it to change it to a pokeball, wondering if there is any other reason.
In the USA, using the Thumbnail would fall under Fair Use and be perfectly fine.
Instead, what they've done is defame Palworld by making false claims about them in an attempt to cause direct monetary and reputation damages as well as indirect damages via ongoing legal disputes from Nintendo, which is highly illegal as a civil matter.
Ragebait
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