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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Fuck AI
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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.
The "6 finger thing" has also been mostly trained out of modern models and it's such an old meme it's the first thing anyone looks for in any sort of review.
Not only can they not photoshop, they can't even AI properly.
That or the 6 fingers were a deliberate choice. Trying to associate palworld with AI and therefore copyright infringement?
Trying to associate palworld with AI
Which is even more stupid considering that Pocketpair publicly stated that they don't use AI
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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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 $19 for 1000 words at GameRant[3]) than the former tenured staff. One former contributor described Valnet website Collider to TheWrap as "a content mill, borderline like almost sweatshop-level", while another writer suggested that Valnet forced contractors to create "junky clickbait" content. Valnet writers who complain about payment, working conditions, or reveal payment rates are alleged to be blacklisted by the company
I always liked polygon…
XDA
Holy fucking shit no wonder it appears that they sold out
Cause they DID.
XDA has gotten so much worse in the last 6 months it is astounding. Some unreal work is being done to kill custom android ROMs.
You shouldn't be allowed to own that much stuff. Simple solution.
Thankfully there's the FTC and its antitrust law! /$
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.
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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.
Valnet writers who [...] reveal payment rates are alleged to be blacklisted by the company
That sounds flat out illegal.
is this why xda became shit?
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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
↑ this
Holy hell
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 and all of its sister sites are just the worst writing on the internet. Shitty takes and shitty business practices.
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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.
Ragebait
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.
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