Looks like the people at The Verge did the right thing then, or maybe that's a root cause.
On the other hand it looks like Polygon and The Verge are becoming more and more like the same thing. Since Topolsky left there might be something happening there as well.
The Verge is unrecognizable as the tech news site that it was founded as (under the This Is My Next moniker). Two of the top five articles on their site are currently about sports, unsurprising as they are owned by the same parent as SB-Nation. They also have 'authors' whose entire output seems to consist of blogspam summaries of articles on other sites.
The Verge wasn't founded as a tech news site. It was founded as a culture site, with a slant towards tech (because technology is a part of everyday culture).
This has been their message since the very beginning.
That sports article currently featured on the front page? About how tech and social media is changing sports. Just because there's a football doesn't mean its off topic for a 'tech' website. http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/28/7878051/espn-sportscenter-...
There are many times where I've noticed Verge and Polygon post articles on the exact same topics and it doesn't make sense at all since Polygon was originally meant to only be for game industry discussion.
Which is pretty disappointing since originally their mission statement seemed to be that they wanted to escape that mindset (most of the original team came from Engadget and such).
The goal is to get traffic from facebook/reddit/twitter/etc, not to report unique or relevant things. By blurring the boundaries they create opportunities to link to each other and re-monetize content because both sites have a shot at pulling traffic from social media.
With respect to the business side that makes perfect sense. But as to their original direction when they were creating the distinct Polygon property, it's gone pretty far off-course.
Polygon was interesting when it started, but then they stopped their deep journalism pieces, adulterated the site with non-game content, and hired Ben Kuchera :-(
I think they found out in-depth longread type articles don't guarantee a consistent readership. It's possible to pull off if it's a once a week or twice a week kind of thing, but they were trying to do it as their main content source.
On the other hand it looks like Polygon and The Verge are becoming more and more like the same thing. Since Topolsky left there might be something happening there as well.