But I'm sure they'll still charge advertisers per impression sted conversion. Enshittification at its finest.

Valnet, the self-proclaimed “leading digital media investment company” behind the likes of Polygon, GameRant, OpenCritic, Collider, and over a dozen more gaming, technology, and lifestyle websites, isn’t known for paying its freelance writers well. But new “Pay Per Session” contracts issued to writers and editors at TheGamer on May 21 threaten to break new ground when it comes to click-mill-style exploitation.

According to details outlined in TheGamer’s Slack, these new terms, mandated by Valnet management, would “reward top-performing articles.” However, Kotaku last learned, based on the details outlined in the newly issued contracts, that the proposed “performance structure” would also result in writers not being paid at all if their articles do not exceed a minimum threshold of views.

Valnet was founded by Hassan Youssef and Sam Youssef, who were previously the owners of Canadian pornographic production company Brazzers and the “silent partners” of Pornhub, in 2012. The company has since earned a negative reputation over the years for the way it treats staff and freelance writers, with one former Collider employee describing it as “a content mill, borderline like almost sweatshop-level” during an interview with TheWrap in 2025 (I briefly freelanced for TheGamer from 2022 to 2023).