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Walmart-Backed Gaming Site Restart.run Cuts Entire Editorial Staff
Restart.run, the gaming news site Walmart helped launch in December 2024, laid off its whole editorial team last Friday, exposing the fragility of brand-funded content when AI search cuts into referral traffic.
Key takeaways
- Restart.run, funded by Walmart and run by agency Moonrock, laid off its entire editorial team on August 8, 2026, according to editor-in-chief Brandy Berthelson's Bluesky post.
- Walmart and Moonrock have not confirmed the reason; it's unconfirmed whether underperformance or budget cuts triggered the layoffs.
- GameDeveloper.com's Chris Kerr points to Google's AI search results cutting traffic to gaming publications as a broader industry pressure.
- The global games market hit $201.6 billion in 2025 per Newzoo, showing consumer interest hasn't translated into stable media funding.
- Brands funding owned editorial outlets should audit how much traffic and commercial signal they're actually getting before AI search reshapes referral paths further.
What happened
Walmart's gaming news experiment just lost its newsroom. Restart.run, the outlet Walmart helped fund and agency Moonrock launched in December 2024, laid off its entire editorial team last Friday, according to editor-in-chief Brandy Berthelson's post on Bluesky, first reported by Digiday. Editors Jesse Vitelli and Imran Khan and deals writer Myles Obenza also confirmed they were let go.
It's unclear how many people were affected; Restart's staff page lists 10 names, but that appears to include freelancers. Walmart and Moonrock did not respond to requests for comment, and it remains unconfirmed whether the cuts stem from underperformance, a funding pullback, or another cause entirely.
Why it matters for marketers
Chris Kerr, senior editor at GameDeveloper.com, told Modern Retail that video game media faces the same traffic squeeze as other verticals: Google's AI search results are cutting off referral clicks and starving ad revenue. That's the same dynamic marketers chasing generative engine optimization keep running into: visibility in AI answers rarely comes with a measurable revenue trail.
Global games market value at end of 2025
Newzoo
Kerr also noted that major publishers like Xbox, Nintendo and PlayStation increasingly bypass third-party outlets to reach consumers directly, and that paid influencer coverage has undercut the perceived value of traditional gaming press. Any CMO funding owned or sponsored editorial should read this as a caution: audience interest in a category, even a $201.6 billion one, doesn't guarantee a media outlet's survival if traffic sources dry up.
What to watch
Track whether Walmart comments on Restart's future, and whether GameStop's 2025 Game Informer relaunch (after its 2024 shutdown) offers a playbook for brand-funded media that survives a traffic downturn. For marketers weighing GEO spend against unclear returns, CMO Mag's AEO playbook for 2026 and its look at record zero-click search rates both lay out how to separate real attribution from visibility theater.
Get more AI-search and GEO coverage at CMO Mag's AI in Marketing hub.
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